Inflated with diarrhea

[RustyPocket]

Hello everybunny. We already had one crisis situation in April, but this is the first time I ask about it.

To start from beggining. We have two litters of 15 in total and, as they are 6 weeks old, we weaned them 2 days ago, combined boys with boys and girls with girls. Yesterday we noticed something we didn't want to see. Back in the April, when we weaned Fawn's litter and another litter, our newly weaned kits started being sick, it would start with inflated tummies and refusing eating, then in a day or 2 they would get diarrhea, and eventually some kits would die, probably of starvation. I first noticed on Fawn back then, and we took her to a vet, which said it's a stress thing, not a virus or bacteria, not contagious. I did manage to save Fawn as she was going to the vet 3 days in a row in order to get injections. However, out of those 18 kits from two litters, we currently have 2 girls and 4 boys. 12 kits didn't make it. Then, when we though it was over, one of our does, who had 9 3-weekers still with her, also got same simptoms. Long story short, only one baby made it. So, all in all, we lost 22 bunnies back then. We did contact another vet who said the same as the firts one. Nothing mayor changed in the rabbitry prior, that could cause such stress.

This time one girl is in a terrible condition, another girl and one boy are really inflated but the diarrhea did not yet come. As back in the April, we treat them with sulphadimidine (32%) in their water. I am afraid for our two raising does that currently have 10 kits with them. I had to syringe feed Fawn because she didn't want to at or drink, and beside water with sulphadimidine, I was giving her a purée made of cooked carrot, just so that she eats something beside water. I could try it with these kits, but if any more gets worse, it will be kinda hard to hand-feed 6+ rabbits.

Is there anything I can give to them to make them better? Any drug I can get for them, since it's ovbiously contageous and affects stressed out animals? I am really glad if you can help me, thank you in advance.

-Marko

 

[Zass]

Just to help rule some things out, what is their diet like?

 

[RustyPocket]

It's mostly wheat/rye/triticale combined with some corn and pellets. They also get meadow hay two times a day, and they drink city water. Occasionally they get some greens.

 

[ottersatin]

I believe that you are overloading their tiny system
with too many different things. I suggest that you:
Stop all the additives to the feed and switch to a
strickly pelleted diet, with the addition of grass-hay
and perhaps some rolled oats. Feed the grass-hay in a hay-rack.
Do NOT just toss it onto the floor of the cage as it tends to get soiled and
can create a myriad of intestinal diseases.
Ottersatin. ldtimer:

 

[Dood]

Have you necropsied any of the dead animals to look for anomalies in the orgsns?

Your symptoms sound a lot like intestinal and/or hepatic coccidia and is you regularly treat them with sulfadimidine the parasites may have become resistant and you need to try a different de-wormer.

Regularly scrubbing cages with 10% ammonia solution for 20 minutes and keeping rabbits away from urine and fecal matter is the only way to deal with hepatic coccidia as you can it completely eradicate it from breeders and must prevent kits from getting too much exposure.

If your rabbits have always been on the grain and grass hay diet then I would not suspect enteritis due to their food, unless mold is a possibility.

 

[RustyPocket]

Just finished feeding and found that the little doe passed sometimes during the night.

@ottersatin; Our rabbits are on that same diet ever since we got them 1 and a half years ago. You suggested pellet diet, but back in April, the vet said to completely remove pellets while they are sick and leave them on cereal + hay only (no corn, no pellets, no greens). As of the hay, we do place it in hayracks about 10 centimeters off the ground.

@Dood; No, we hadn't done necropsy, but I'll try to talk my parents into it. We only give sulphadimidine when rabbits are sick, to the specific cage. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is it like escherichia and humans? We have the specific bacteria, but due the amount of stress after weaning (in rabbit case), it activates and causes bunnies to become sick?

 

[squidpop]

What Dood says is what I was thinking too. It sounds like coccidiosis adult rabbits can carry it and then it shows up in times of stress and in babies during weaning. Coccidiosis is a protozoal infection and e. coli is bacterial. Did your vet examine fecal samples? I'm wondering how they determined it was not something like Coccidiosis or e. coli causing it.

Intestinal coccidiosis
http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/GI_disease ... occ_en.htm
The intestinal form of coccidiosis mainly affects youngsters from the age of 6 weeks to 5 months and is attributed to stress, noise, transport or immunosuppression. It is mainly observed in young newly weaned rabbits, but is also found in older rabbits.

Symptoms are a rough coat, dullness, decreased appetite, dehydration, loss of weight and (profuse) diarrhea, 4 to 6 days post-infection. If the loss of weight reaches 20%, death follows within 24 hours. It is preceded by convulsion or paralysis. During necropsy, inflammation and edema are found in the ileum and the jejunum portions of the intestine. It is sometimes accompanied by bleedings and mucosal ulcerations.

This is from another site and if you already used the sulfa drugs maybe ponazuril would be a good drug to try, although I've heard it is expensive.

http://www.bio.miami.edu/hare/poop.html
As mentioned before, coccidial infection is common, and some vets will simply treat a baby rabbit's diarrhea as coccidia, even without a fecal test. Common antibiotics used to treat coccidia include Albon (sulfadimethoxine) and the potentiated sulfas, such as Trimethoprim Sulfa (TMZ) or Bactrim. However, we have found a more recently developed drug, ponazuril to be far superior to the aforementioned sulfa antibiotics. It eliminates the parasites in a matter of days, rather than weeks.

 

[ottersatin]

@ottersatin; Our rabbits are on that same diet ever since we got them 1 and a half years ago. You suggested pellet diet, but back in April, the vet said to completely remove pellets while they are sick and leave them on cereal + hay only (no corn, no pellets, no greens). As of the hay, we do place it in hay-racks about 10 centimeters off the ground.

In that case Mark, I would stop ALL feed and give only Grass-hay and rolled oats.
But that's just me. others have their own ways of doing things.
I hope all works out for the best.
Ottersatin. ldtimer:

 

[RustyPocket]

@ottersati; Thank you 100 times. I did remove all the food besides hay and all the rabbits are eating, even the sick ones. Hopefully things started to go better. Here's a picture of the inlated doe (the broken chestnut) is eating as normal. In case it starts rolling the unexpected way, I did also remove grain/pellet mix from all other bunns, besides two raising does.


Here you can see her big tummy.


She's eating, finally.

 

[Zass]

Kits are more sensitive to things most of the other rabbits are going to be resistant to, but it also sounds like your doe has had trouble in the past.
I agree with everyone that it's either an imbalance (too much starchy grain and corn feeding intestinal bacteria) or something like Coccidiosis.

I don't know if it's a common practice in your country, but raising rabbits on wire can help reduce the spread of cocci and keep the other babies away from infected feces.

I've even done a test with a litter of my own when I suspected a doe of suffering from cocci, the weaned kits that were raised on the ground had bloated bellies and horrible spotty livers at butchering time, and their litter mates raised on wire had good bodies and very clean livers.

Bad livers from kits raised on the ground:
gallery/image_page.php?album_id=260&image_id=2297

In comparison, the other half of the kits that were raised on wire had one single white spot on just one liver.

No drugs or special feeds were given to either.

 

[MamaSheepdog]

I am so sorry for your losses, Marko!

I also think that coccidia may be the problem.

I've even done a test with a litter of my own when I suspected a doe of suffering from cocci, the weaned kits that were raised on the ground had bloated bellies and horrible spotty livers at butchering time, and their litter mates raised on wire had good bodies and very clean livers.

Bad livers from kits raised on the ground:
gallery/image_page.php?album_id=260&image_id=2297

Wow, Zass! What a difference!

Would you mind posting about your experiment in a new thread, please? I think that this graphic example of the way that housing rabbits can make such a difference in disease transmission/progression is too important to be buried in another thread.

 

[Zass]

I am so sorry for your losses, Marko!

I also think that coccidia may be the problem.

I've even done a test with a litter of my own when I suspected a doe of suffering from cocci, the weaned kits that were raised on the ground had bloated bellies and horrible spotty livers at butchering time, and their litter mates raised on wire had good bodies and very clean livers.

Bad livers from kits raised on the ground:
gallery/image_page.php?album_id=260&image_id=2297

Wow, Zass! What a difference!

Would you mind posting about your experiment in a new thread, please? I think that this graphic example of the way that housing rabbits can make such a difference in disease transmission/progression is too important to be buried in another thread.

Sure, I'll outline the whole story sometime tonight. I may even have pics of the healthy rabbit's livers for comparison, or at least a pic of the bloated looking kits. (they also had diarrhea)
It made such a huge impression on me that I bought all new wire cages this year and brush them out carefully once a week.
I burned all the old hutches. I simply no longer tolerate anywhere feces might buildup. I still haven't wormed or given any drugs for cocci to the doe I suspected (Pancake, actually) or the rest of my herd, and I haven't had any sick livers.
When it all started, Pancake almost died and went through a round of being hand fed, which sounds very similar to what the person who posted this thread has gone through with their doe.
She's quite healthy now, and the last time Pancake lost a kit was a runt in a litter of 11, and those kits still finished at 10 weeks I think, even through the corn-in-the-feed issue I had.
Only Esper lost a kit through that, and it was to very obvious mucoid enteritis, so I know it wasn't cocci.

 

[RustyPocket]

I don't know if it's a common practice in your country, but raising rabbits on wire can help reduce the spread of cocci and keep the other babies away from infected feces.

It's not. Where I live rabbits are still kept in very traditional way, in cages with solid floors, so when I came to my parents with the idea to try colony breedeing of my own, they were like "WHAT? Another of those nonsences you found on THE EVIL INTERNET..." On various forums and breeders associations' web pages I can also see many professional breeders still breed in traditional cages and wire cages are sort of a stigma since many people think it's really bad for rabbit feet. I must confest that I am a bit sceptical towards the wirefloored cages myself.

 

[Mary Ann's Rabbitry]

I put a board in all of my cages.. they have to be able to rest of the wire when they want to.

 

[Zass]

I don't know if it's a common practice in your country, but raising rabbits on wire can help reduce the spread of cocci and keep the other babies away from infected feces.

It's not. Where I live rabbits are still kept in very traditional way, in cages with solid floors, so when I came to my parents with the idea to try colony breedeing of my own, they were like "WHAT? Another of those nonsences you found on THE EVIL INTERNET..." On various forums and breeders associations' web pages I can also see many professional breeders still breed in traditional cages and wire cages are sort of a stigma since many people think it's really bad for rabbit feet. I must confest that I am a bit sceptical towards the wirefloored cages myself.

I do understand that it is a personal choice that is strongly influenced by where you live.

I can only speak from the perspective of someone who is coming from a very large country where rabbits are more often kept on wire than wood.

I'm not trying to convince you to use wire, but I would like to explain a bit of how it's seen here as
even household pets are often kept in wire bottomed cages, or their litterboxes sometimes are given a wire cover to keep them from contacting their own feces.

Maybe we have more problems with cocci here. :shrug:

Personally, the wire allows me to rely on sanitation instead of chemicals to keep my herd healthy, which I think is an acceptable tradeoff. I would be able to see if there was a problem with their feet or legs, but I cannot see damage that is happening inside of them.

Most of the rabbits that I keep have very thickly furred feet and a moderate weight range which puts them an no danger at all for feet problems on wire. I do provide plastic resting boards to give them a place to get off the wire. Those resting boards also get taken out and cleaned when the cages get brushed out.

Sore hocks are generally a breed specific problem. Rex and rex coated rabbits tend to have the most trouble with it, but some people have strains of rex that have been selectively bred for wider feet and better foot fur. Basically, they have become adapted to living on wire more comfortably. I do have a rex coated house pet rabbit. She has bald feet despite always being kept off wire. It's just a problem within the breed.

 

[Marinea]

I think Zass is right on with this.

I also started my rabbit journey with a wooden hutch. Now I have wire cages, and I am having a much easier time. All of my rabbits have a large ceramic tile they can rest on, although they mainly use them only in the hot summer months to cool off. I have had no problems with sore feet.

If it is cocci you are dealing with, I would be very concerned that you could end up with a chronic issue, as wood hutches are very hard to get the kind of clean needed to wipe it all out for good. Maybe an idea would be to try a rabbit in a wire cage, maybe a buck so as not to disturb the colony more than needed. See how he does. See if you have any feet problems. If it goes well, then you can decide what to do. If you aren't happy with the cage, if nothing else, you would have a quarantine spot if needed.

 

[Miss M]

Marko, if you lose another rabbit, do try to convince your parents to allow you to do a necropsy. You would want to do it as soon after the rabbit died as possible. If you see a liver with the white nodules on it (even just a few) like the picture Zass posted, you are definitely dealing with coccidiosis. You would know exactly what is going on. You probably wouldn't even need to continue the necropsy if you saw that.

Necropsy photos are allowed here in Illnesses, Injuries, and Parasites. If you want to post pictures (for instance, you aren't sure if you're seeing cocci nodules on the liver, so you're posting heart, lung, kidney, liver, stomach, and intestinal photos), make them as good as possible. Use as good a camera as you can. Daylight is best, but try with and without flash to see what comes out the best. Rinse organs if they have blood on them, and avoid having a lot of blood in the photos. Take pictures of anything else that looks suspect to you.