Mastitis in nursing Momma Bun

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Mary

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My bunny Lily has a 3 week old litter of eight kits. I've been giving her parsley and fennel with her regular daily feeding of organic mixed greens to increase milk production. Yesterday I felt a mass on her belly. It is flat, irregular shaped and has distinct borders. She also seemed lethargic but is eating and pooping just fine. Took her into the bunny doc today and he did an ultrasound and said she has mastitis and some gas in her GI parts. He has me giving her sulfamethoxa/trimeth 200mg/40mg 1.3ml twice a day. I am also giving her Simthicone for the gas. She also is sneezing a lot. These started two days ago when I put together her new/larger hutch. I assumed at the time that I had just kicked up a lot of dust or something but it hasn't gone away. There is no drainage under her nose. She had this when I first got her and the antibiotic from the vet didn't work. It finally went away with a long time treatment of colloidal silver in her water.
Is there anything else I can be doing for this mastitis to make her more comfortable? Warm compresses or something? I'm pretty sure she is still feeding the babies as they still have big bellies and are very active and growing. Fortunately they are already grazing on hay and pellets and drinking water. She doesn't seem to want to be around them though. I assume this is because they pester her to nurse and it might be painful right now. I swear I have little piglets, not baby kits.
Any ideas on the sneezing? I'm pretty sure this isn't the dreaded snuffles as I have two other rabbits that she is in constant contact with and neither of them have symptoms.
 
Warm compresses on her teats will help circulation and ease the pain, remember rabbits have a higher body temperature than people so warm to you may feel cool to a rabbit.

Gently messaging the teat and trying to express the milk will also help the infection clear faster.
 
I hadn't thought about the massaging and expressing the milk. Thank you, nobody else suggested that.<br /><br />__________ Thu Feb 07, 2013 1:33 pm __________<br /><br />The only thing I changed was the hutch and it is a plain plastic bottom with the wire top "cage" but we don't use the "C" word in our house. I tried the warm moist compress and she wasn't thrilled with it even though I told her she was "spa-ing". Next time I will try feeding her fennel slices to get her to lie still. I called my vet about the Metacam. They are two towns over and we are having a snow storm so they called the "prescription" into our local vet and when I picked it up they had it written to give to her every 12 hours. Good thing I asked my vet the dosage because it's supposed to be every 24 hours. I pointed this out to them and they corrected it on the label. I've also added colloidal silver to her water.
She seems to be sneezing less and last night she did a considerable amount of grooming and was moving around more so I'm thinking the simethicone got rid of some painful gas. So now I keep doing what I'm doing and watch and wait.

Also, the area is not discolored and the vet was not concerned about the babies nursing. She did nurse them this morning and they are bouncing around the room like little billiard balls. When you're a baby bunny you just gotta zoooommmmm....!
 
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