I know the photos are kind of poor - I was doing this outside at dusk so the flash kind of blew out the photos. This is the first time I've actually opened up a rabbit for necropsy - usually I'm just processing for the table and take just a quick look at what comes out and plop it in a bucket. I was trying to be careful but didn't do a great job.
This doe was a little over a year old Mini Lop. Monday morning I found her in her shelter, she didn't come out for breakfast which was not normal. Monday evening she was still in her box and had not ate or drank all day. I brought her in and gave her fluids orally with a syringe which she drank. Very lethargic and was bony under her fur - She had a large mass just below the ribcage which I thought would be her stomach and assumed she had a mass or blockage of some sort. Before Monday she had seemed to be normal and didn't show any signs of illness. She died Tuesday morning about 7 am and I did the Necropsy around 6 that night.
When I opened her up her stomach was huge and full of feed - about the size of a baseball. I didn't take out the heart/lungs at that point. I did look in the chest cavity at the heart and it was very normal looking. Small intestines looked pretty normal, the Large where very dark and the best way I can describe it is 'full of pudding' I didn't open it up. Kidneys/Liver looked OK to me. maybe a shade dark but I didn't have a lot of light to see by. She had normal fecal pellets in very lower part of her tract. I did open the stomach and found nothing other than feed and a scant amount of hair which I took for normal ingestion from grooming. Contents were not abnormally foul smelling.
I didn't actually find any type of blockage but it's very possible I missed it. I'm not sure what my conclusion is other than maybe GI stasis - Why I don't know - perhaps the fact that water has been limited to two or three times a day because of it freezing.
This doe was a little over a year old Mini Lop. Monday morning I found her in her shelter, she didn't come out for breakfast which was not normal. Monday evening she was still in her box and had not ate or drank all day. I brought her in and gave her fluids orally with a syringe which she drank. Very lethargic and was bony under her fur - She had a large mass just below the ribcage which I thought would be her stomach and assumed she had a mass or blockage of some sort. Before Monday she had seemed to be normal and didn't show any signs of illness. She died Tuesday morning about 7 am and I did the Necropsy around 6 that night.
When I opened her up her stomach was huge and full of feed - about the size of a baseball. I didn't take out the heart/lungs at that point. I did look in the chest cavity at the heart and it was very normal looking. Small intestines looked pretty normal, the Large where very dark and the best way I can describe it is 'full of pudding' I didn't open it up. Kidneys/Liver looked OK to me. maybe a shade dark but I didn't have a lot of light to see by. She had normal fecal pellets in very lower part of her tract. I did open the stomach and found nothing other than feed and a scant amount of hair which I took for normal ingestion from grooming. Contents were not abnormally foul smelling.
I didn't actually find any type of blockage but it's very possible I missed it. I'm not sure what my conclusion is other than maybe GI stasis - Why I don't know - perhaps the fact that water has been limited to two or three times a day because of it freezing.
