Need a little help with sick bunnies

[Morning Star]

I have a bit of a situation on hand. I recently ( two days ago ) bought five Flemish Giants from someone. They were all community raised with two neutered males which I am not sure what to do with, and three non-spayed does which I will hopefully be able to use for breeding once they're all healthy and settled.

The good news: They're all of good weight, all very alert and have normal poops/pee, enjoy their greens and hay, are drinking and don't have any bad injuries that I can see.

The bad news: They're sick. They have eye-boogers and one of them has her second eyelids showing just a bit in the corners, one of them has hutch burn and HAD an open sore on a hock which is already healing up thank goodness. They also have pus, goop and pustules around their genitals with one doe having a pretty swollen vulva area. I didn't get to take a look at it for long but it seemed rrreeally puffy and looked like it had pus-like strings and odd discharge on/around it.

Do you think this is just a bunch of cases of hutch burn presenting differently for each bunny or may I have something more serious?

attached are pics of one of the pustules ( they look pretty much the same, rabbit to rabbit, as far as pustules go ) and the one that has really bad hutch burn. They ALL REEK of urine too, and I intend on giving them very careful bunny baths soon.


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SECOND ISSUE: I have a pregnant NZ doe that recently dropped a LOT of weight in a week. We're talking perfectly healthy, good weight preggers doe, suddenly dropped so much that I could feel her spine like she was a walking skeleton. This was very rapid and happened after I'd last palpated her ( @ 15 days, felt quite promising ) and now I am pretty sure she's absorbed the kits. I was feeding her enough, she just completely stopped eating what I was giving her. Ended up keeping her close to me/hand feeding and getting her to take water off greens for a couple days. She perked back up from a REALLY alarming lethargy where she wouldn't hop or go for food or anything and I'm pretty sure her gut had almost completely shut down... tiny shriveled poops! Now she's back up to normal poo and normal eating after about a week and a half, and I'm feeding her lots of pellets, timothy hay bought specially for her since she's refusing the other hay I have, 2-3 cups of greens a day, steel cut oats, and one fruit treat per day like a berry or an apple or orange slice, & etc.

My worry is, she was due to kindle yesterday. I don't want to palpate her again just in case, but if she hasn't kindled in 4 days, should I rebreed? Wait til she's of good weight again?? She's putting weight on again, her spine is no longer pointy and super-defined and her ribs no longer feel like a xylophone but her pelvis area feels very gaunt and bony still and I don't know if I want to risk breeding her again so soon, or if I want to breed her again PERIOD after this. She is a proven doe, has had two litters and I in fact have two of her kits but..... this was very harrowing.

I am also wondering what would have made her start refusing her feed like that. If it's communicable, I deeefinitely don't want to breed her as it would probably result in sick kits and/or a sick buck.

 

[Zass]

I would suggests waiting for your NZ doe to return to a healthy weight. There's no harm in giving her a month to get her condition back. I just nursed my favorite doe through near total GI stasis as well. She is getting all the way till spring to get her condition back.

As far as those Flemish go, I personally can't help much. I don't ever consider breeding any but the healthiest rabbits. I would have refused to pay for rabbits in that condition.
Be sure to keep them separate from your other buns.

and truly I hope someone else on here can help more.

 

[Morning Star]

Thankyou for the input! I'm going to give her time to get back up to weight... really don't want to lose her if that mysterious weight-drop happens again.

It's okay, too. I'm not going to breed them if they don't get better, so for now they're just my 'bunny rehab' project. I've quarantined them away from the rest of the buns too, in a 'community' type pen that's right on the ground with a lattice bottom so they don't get sore hocks.

 

[Desert Rose Rabbits]

Keep an eye on the one that is showing her third eyelid. I purchased two does (sisters), originally intended to be my foundation stock, and when I went to pick them up one looked good but the other had a bit of her third eyelid showing. Kept them quarantined from my buck and treated the sick doe with eye meds. It would clear up, swelling would go down and everything would look great. After about two weeks of clear eyes I stopped the meds and within 24 hours her eye was having problems again. Treated once more and everything looked good for a bout a week and then BOOM out of nowhere she presented with a massive dental abscess and sneezing. Turns out that the girls had a strain of pasteurella and the reason her third eyelid was showing was because there was an abscess that was pushing on things and making it show. The swelling was going down due to the antibiotic eye ointment. I ended up having to cull her and when I opened her up it wasn't pretty.

 

[AnnClaire]

Eyes - could be pink eye ... needs the purple cow med; - could be signs of staph infection ... treat or don't treat and take the losses as the survivors will have more robust immune systems; - could be Pasteurella ... terminally cull and examine the lungs for infection, look for abcesses, etc.

Pustules in groin area - probably rabbit STD, needs antibiotic treatment ... check Medirabbit(dot)com, etc.

Hutch burn - trim all fur away until you have a margin of healthy skin exposed, wash with a mild antibacterial soap, pat dry, apply Desitin or other diaper rash ointment. If yellow areas (indicating infection), scrub until clear, healthy flesh is seen, apply topical antibacterial ointment and watch for improvement.

As it is, if they do have Pasteurella, just because some recover from the additional issues, they could still carry virulent pasteurella and end up infecting your other stock. Unless you want to keep them permanently quarantined from your other stock, I would suggest that you treat for what you can, get them as healthy as you can and terminally cull all of them before the rest of your stock is infected.

 

[ladysown]

I'd be eating the neutered bucks... they won't be useful to you otherwise so eat 'em or sell 'em.

the ones with pustules... you can choose to treat and cure, or simply terminally cull.

Anything that looks like it might have pasturella I'd simply cull.

Hutch burn. AnnClaire has good advise there. keep 'em clean and dry and they should come around for you just fine.

The skinny doe I would simply cull. I don't mess around with unknown illnesses. I want strong healthy stock that I can trust. And she wouldn't fit my mandate of trust.

 

[Morning Star]

A little update on this; it turns out that they're all neutered and spayed. One of the Does I called Pestilence (the one pictured, named that because she had the worst problems and hutch-burn) looked like she was getting better except for a crooked jaw ( think it was broken & healed wrong from bad treatment poor girl) and then I went out there one night and there was bloodspatter ALL OVER. It looked like a Gladiator movie! She'd ripped a chunk from her mouth about the size of a nickle and was acting like she was in shock - huddled, nonresponsive, wouldn't take food, wouldn't let anybody look at it. The other rabbits were also becoming hostile to her very quickly - there was a couple bites on her face so I got her out of there immediately to take a look at her and decided it would be best to cull her rather than force her to live in pain. I culled her and then did a bunny autopsy and NOOO UTERUS. None! I'm going to be culling the other does and the two bucks since they aren't useful for the rabbitry, and will possibly be eating the meat in the household or will be giving it to pets.

I'm pretty upset that they're not able to be bred They had some really gorgeous opal coloring, as well as a couple REW and one black with silver ticking that we've called Abaddon. I don't know if we'll be keeping her or not, might let her be a pretty House Rabbit since we've all grown kind of fond of her. Oh well... You win some, you lose some. I definitely know I want Flemish Giants in the future, though!

Thankyou for all your help. It did assist a lot in caring for them so far and I'll treat them well right til the end. Gonna give them a bit of carrot as a last meal, they love it!

 

[Miss M]

Wow, so sorry to hear all of that! At least you can get meals out of them.