Zami, my dog, suddenly demanded something was very wrong with her bunnies in the other room. She got the other dog going and they were running back and forth from me to the bunnies with very excited behavior. I thought someone escaped or something. I checked the room to find no loose bunnies so I opened the bottom cage to do a head count. Amako, her son from a previous litter, and several kits in the nestbox were sitting there just fine. Then I heard odd sounds. Behind the nestbox I found a 2 week old kit making grunting noises with an eye gunked shut. I thought maybe he poked it on hay and took him to the bathroom. I immediately found it was much worse than that. Both eyes were gunked shut, his nose was covered, his breathing was odd, and when picked up he would tighten in to an odd shape. I took pics (came out too blurry) and vid real quick which are uploading, created a makeshift steam tent cause I saw no way I was going to get all the gunk out by hand, and then pulled out every other rabbit. Everyone was fine. The kit in my little steam tent had it's eyes open and was moving around but his breathing was so bad I could hear it from across the condo in a different room. Then while I was moving those pics it suddenly stopped. I found him dead.
What happened so suddenly to one rabbit? There have been no new rabbits in 2 months and no illness except some mild diarrhea in otherwise healthy acting rabbits probably from over eating pumpkin and cranberries after halloween. A few days of only grains and hay and everyone seemed back to normal.
The nestbox has 3 ages of kits. Poor Amako is being used to raise everyone else's kits again. There were 4, 2week olds of Amakos with one of the castors being the one lost, then 2, 3week olds who's nest got destroyed in a territory dispute while 3 does were trying to nest in the same area, and 2, 1week olds from a litter of 10 out of a half mini rex who could not care for that many. One of the youngest is rather skinny and not feeding as well as I'd like but other than that the rest all looked healthy and tried to take off across the room while I was counting them. One castor kit did get grabbed by a cat. A cage design flaw and the cats being released from the bathroom after weeks of not being around the rabbit cages led to one being pulled out of the nest and then immediately rescued. I saw no marks on it but who knows. That was about 6 days ago though.
Warning loud volume due to the bathroom exhaust fan being run 24/7 for the cats currently confined in there
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v244/ ... CN0854.mp4
That's the noise it made every breath until it died. A few days ago all kits were fine. Zami normally will not allow sleep until every rabbit has been checked but my insomnia meds haven't been working so I've been tired and only pulling out about half the kits the past 2 days.
What happened so suddenly to one rabbit? There have been no new rabbits in 2 months and no illness except some mild diarrhea in otherwise healthy acting rabbits probably from over eating pumpkin and cranberries after halloween. A few days of only grains and hay and everyone seemed back to normal.
The nestbox has 3 ages of kits. Poor Amako is being used to raise everyone else's kits again. There were 4, 2week olds of Amakos with one of the castors being the one lost, then 2, 3week olds who's nest got destroyed in a territory dispute while 3 does were trying to nest in the same area, and 2, 1week olds from a litter of 10 out of a half mini rex who could not care for that many. One of the youngest is rather skinny and not feeding as well as I'd like but other than that the rest all looked healthy and tried to take off across the room while I was counting them. One castor kit did get grabbed by a cat. A cage design flaw and the cats being released from the bathroom after weeks of not being around the rabbit cages led to one being pulled out of the nest and then immediately rescued. I saw no marks on it but who knows. That was about 6 days ago though.
Warning loud volume due to the bathroom exhaust fan being run 24/7 for the cats currently confined in there
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v244/ ... CN0854.mp4
That's the noise it made every breath until it died. A few days ago all kits were fine. Zami normally will not allow sleep until every rabbit has been checked but my insomnia meds haven't been working so I've been tired and only pulling out about half the kits the past 2 days.