Please help- Coccidia

[WildWolf]

I haven't been on rabbittalk in a very long time... but I know how helpful everyone can be.

I just had an adult rabbit (Zodiac) die last night. I found him this morning, and it looks like he had diarrhea. He was perfectly normal just yesterday. So, I'm thinking it is coccidiosis. I will be doing an autopsy tonight. (I've got to go to work this morning).

So, I have a few questions about cocci. First of all, could it be anything else? Should I look for something other than coccidia in the liver or GI tract?

Also, for the past two days I've been trying to breed him. He always mounted a lot and the doe lifted, but he never fell off. Could that be because he had cocci? Maybe it hurt him (doesn't cocci come with abdominal pain sometimes?) And, what is the danger to the doe? Could she get cocci? I think I want to wait and see if I can palpate her before I try to breed her to someone else. If she's carrying his rabbits, then that would be awesome. Unless- would they have cocci? Of course, if she has cocci then I don't want to breed her.

Could it have been the breeding that caused the cocci to surface? I know it can be dormant and then cause a problem when the rabbit is stressed. We also have raccoons in our neighborhood, so it could have been that a raccoon (or cat for that matter) tried to get in or just walked by.

That's the other thing. What's the danger to my other rabbits? None are in contact with his feces. However, he might've sprayed into their runs. My rabbits all have an off-the-ground hutch and a run and is on the ground. They all share 1 common wall of wire (where they touch noses, sniff, spray, ect.).

And lastly, what do I do now? I'm planning on washing his whole hutch and wire walls with ammonia. Also, I'm going to clean out everyone's runs and get all the feces off the ground. That'll be easy since they only poop in certain spots. Should I get medicine to treat the other rabbits?

I thought of one more question. Can I use his fur? Can I use his meat?

I work as a vet/kennel assistant at a vet's office. I'm going to ask them their opinion on what to do. They do see rabbits, but not very often. Usually they see rabbits in order to sex them and to trim their nails (pet rabbits whose owners apparently don't want to do that themselves). I will tell you all what they say.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Dood]

Don't ever use meat, for yourself or your pets, from a rabbit that died of a mystery illness - his fur is fine and might be easier to remove due to dehydration

Nearly every animal on earth has SMALL amounts of coccidia and other potentially pathogenic parasites and bacteria in their intestines which only become problems when they get too high in numbers - giardia, E.coli, listeria, Clostridium sp. and others can cause diahhrea, and of course digestive upset from diet changes can cause a case of the runs

Removing as much of his fecal matter from the ground will help reduce another rabbit from coming in contact with an infectious dose of whatever he had but I would not use his ground pen for a very long time, or possibly never, if I couldn't figure out what the issue was and how long the pathogen can survive in the soil

Unless someone else has the diahhrea - be especially watchful of the youngsters - I wouldn't treat the whole herd. I personally prefer to breed for resistance than to medicate and it sounds like this might be a one time thing, however, I've never had an adult rabbit with diarrhea and it's odd to me that an adult would have such an issue :shrug:

Rabbit coccidia looks the same a dog or cat coccidia so maybe have the vet check out a fecal sample from the dead buck and one from a health rabbit so see if he had a higher parasite load

 

[WildWolf]

Thanks!!
So, the vet said a similar thing about there being coccidia in the environment and it only is a problem when the rabbits display symptoms i.e. when there's a high amount of coccidia. She also said that she wouldn't want to treat unless the others show symptoms because the treatment is an antibiotic. I will ask her on Tuesday (when I go back to work) how long cocci can live in the soil. She offered to send in a fecal sample to the lab to test for coccidia, but it costs around $60. I'm going to do an autopsy and see what I find instead of the fecal sample.

Also, I have an alternate theory for why the buck got stressed. I don't really think that breeding stresses him, especially not to the point that cocci would be a problem. I think a raccoon attempted to enter the run. There is some suspicious things broken and out of place in his run. We've had a raccoon problem before.Here is what I found when I autopsied. I'm not sure what's normal and what's not. There were a few things I found strange, but I have little experience with looking at the insides of a rabbit.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's what I found when I opened him up

The heart is much darker on the top. Is that normal?:

Here's the other weird thing. It's hard to see, but there were red spots that were hard to discern on the GI tract:

Then, the lungs were very red. But, is that from the fact that we autopsied him a day after he died, or....?

The liver looked completely normal and healthy, except for the little thing on it:

Also, is there a lot of fat? Or is that a normal amount of fat? I never thought he felt fat when I felt how bumpy his spine was.

Thanks in advance! I don't have much experience with what normal rabbits' insides look like.

-- Sat May 23, 2015 8:01 pm --

If a raccoon climbed in and tried to eat him...Is it possible that he died of a heart attack from fright?

 

[Dood]

The little "thingy" on the liver is a gall bladder and it looks a bit enlarged.

He certainly did not have hepatic coccidia and I don't see obvious signs of intestinal but the liver looks a bit pale and that could indicate he was not eating from either GI stasis or pain (which is more likely as he had diarrhea) but it may also be from decomposition :shrug:

The colour of the cecum is rather dark - what diet were you feeding?

I suspect he died from toxins from an intestinal bacterial infection

 

[WildWolf]

Thanks!!!

He was eating a natural diet. Alfalfa hay, wheat grain, and greens that I identified and knew were safe. All the other rabbits eat the exact same thing....
The diarrhea I found looked like a small amount of poop smeared on his rear end. I never found any diarrhea in his run or hutch. Is it possible that the poop I thought was diarrhea was just poop that he excreted as he died? His GI tract was full. Completely. If he died of fright/heart attack, and had a full GI tract, could his death cause him to excrete?

 

[Dood]

If he was getting a lot of greens and pure alfalfa that explains the darker colour of his cecum and while many animals release their bowels if frightened or from relaxed sphincter muscles post mortem it's not that common in rabbits as their poops linked in the large intesting and are rather firm, except for their cecotropes :shrug:

It remains a mystery but an infection is sounding more doubtful

 

[WildWolf]

Hm. Well, the vet said everything looks healthy, except the heart which was the cause of death. She said that coloring was due to something bursting. She agreed that if the rabbit got extremely scared, then it could burst a blood vessel or something in the heart. She said that the poop I'd found might've been simply that the he was full when he died. But you have a good point that rabbits poop in pellets, and I found squishy blobs. But, maybe that's because the poop was not ready to be excreted yet, so it had not formed hard pellets yet. Thanks again for your help! It's reassuring to have another rabbit person to discuss this with, in addition to a vet.