Snuffles- Help Please!

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Silver Willow

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One of our non breeders has had a bit of a weepy eye for about a month now, and this morning it was significantly worse. Does anyone have any ideas on how we can treat him? We aren't able to go to the vet for numerous reasons (one of them being that we only either have a rural or tow vet available), so is possible we would love if someone knows of something that might work.

When I first noticed Brambles eye, about four weeks ago, I just told my younger sister (the bunnies owner) to wash his eye every day with a bit of warm water. I think I just assumed it was no big deal, that he just had something in his tear duct etc. But back then there was only a bit of clear fluid, with a tiny bit of white stuff.

So she's been actually quite good at doing so, getting out the cotton buds just about every day (sometimes twice) to clean Brambles gooeys away. The only thing is it never really seemed to get any better, though it also didn't appear to be getting any worse. So the eye cleaning continued.

Then this morning, the poor wee critter was found in his hutch like this:

Screen Shot 2015-05-13 at 9.13.10 am.png

Not the very best of photos, but you can see his eye is well closed, with a very large amount of white 'snot'. The thing that's really got me puzzled though, is that other then his awful looking eye, he's apparently fine. There is no fluid at all around his nose, no matting on his paws, and his other eye is all bright and clear. He could be a little fatter, but I guess that's only to be expected :(

Here's Bramble after I cleaned him up a bit, with some more warm water, cotton buds and a little epsom salt. He still isn't looking much better, and you can see how puffed up his lower lid is:

Screen Shot 2015-05-13 at 9.20.20 am.png

So my guess is that with all the eye cleaning that's been going on, his eye never really had the time to get clogged up. And after cleaning was forgotten yesterday, it looks as though it's much worse then I thought.

Any help/ advise much appreciated!
 
With the lack of other symptoms, you might be able to treat for a bacterial infection using terramycin eye ointment. I'm sure others will chime in. Poor bun.
 
That's what I was thinking. .terramycin twice a day for 10 days then once a day for another 4..I believe that was the regimen I used before. Just put a thin line on a q tip and gently roll it into the lower lid...I always had a helper to make it easy on the bun...poor guy..that looks like quite an infection. :cry:

-- Tue May 12, 2015 10:19 pm --

I would wonder if he got a scratch on his eyeball? With the cleaning there shouldn't be any debris in there..Was he exposed to any other rabbits? <br /><br /> -- Wed May 13, 2015 8:49 am -- <br /><br /> Dood? Anyone?this bun needs help.. :(
 
Our bun Romeo had goopy eyes for a while, though it didn't get this bad. Mom (Miss M) rubbed his eye with Vetericyn, and he got better, but when it came back, we figured it was the Cornish Cross chickens, who stank, that were right below him. They're gone and he's fine now.

Another idea is chamomile tea. It's a great eye wash, and is very soothing. It helps get rid of nestbox eye, which can blind baby bunnies.

Another bun of ours, Thumper, got goopy eyes, and we tracked it to his hay, which had molded. But since it looks like Bramble's an inside bun (is he?), I doubt that's the problem.

:clover:
 
Mom's given me a lot to post, so here it is, and I believe that this is the best advice on this you can get.


You are fighting for this rabbit's life now. It's her belief that this is an infection and it has spread beyond the eye in the four weeks since it started. What you need to do now is get some PenG and syringes fast, weigh the rabbit, and post his weight on here. The members who know how will figure for you how much PenG you need per dose, and then inject him with the proper dosage. You can even drip some on his eye for the first couple of days. Continue the injections for five days.

PenG costs about ten dollars at our local feed store, and Mom gets syringes with the needles for about four for a dollar.

Good luck!
:clover:
 
Galadriel":3jegz74g said:
Another idea is chamomile tea. It's a great eye wash, and is very soothing. It helps get rid of nestbox eye, which can blind baby bunnies.

Chamomile tea is a very good idea for rubbing on the eye, just make sure you get the Pen G.

A couple of years back our bunny Nibbles had very similar goop around her eye, she ended up getting abscesses all over her body, we did surgery on her, but for some reason it was all for naught, :shrug: and we ended up putting her down :( .
 
Just ducking in here for a moment. :) Yes, my first thought was Terramycin, too... but when Galadriel and Bunny-Wan Kenobi told me (I was hanging laundry and doing some other stuff) that this had been going on for four weeks, I figured this had probably gone beyond the eye by now -- even though you don't see any other symptoms.

Please don't feel bad. If the eye had just been irritated, your sister's careful attention to the eye wash should have taken care of it. I applaud her for her efforts. :hooray:

As Galadriel quoted me above, though, I do believe you are fighting for Bramble's life at this point. I just don't see this going on for four weeks without it spreading. <br /><br /> -- Wed May 13, 2015 2:10 pm -- <br /><br /> By the way, Silver Willow... I'm giving you this treatment advice only because it sounds like this rabbit is a pet.

I will let you know though, if I had a rabbit presenting with this -- even one of my house bunnies -- I would put the rabbit down. The reason is that at this point, the rabbit would be a danger to my other rabbits. Most of the breeders on this forum would do the same thing.

If this was my only rabbit, I'd treat it. But with a rabbitry full of rabbits... I just couldn't take the chance. :(

This is your decision. Keeping Bramble does jeopardize your other rabbits. If I were to treat Bramble, though, that is what I would do. 5 days of Penicillin G Procaine (Pen G).
 
This may be totally off the wall, but I had an experience once with meat rabbit youngsters and I want to relate it. It may apply here or it may not. In any case, one must consider Bramble to be a potential danger to the other rabbits at the present time.

I had a litter of meat rabbit kits, some of who had nest box eye. I treated it in the usual ways: chamomile and black tea washes, terramycin ointment etc. It just wouldn't go away and a couple of them ended up looking much like Bramble. I decided I needed to cull them, but for some reason I didn't get to it right away. In the meantime, however, I discontinued treatment. To my amazement, once I stopped "treating" the eyes, they improved very quickly and before long looked perfectly normal. I was able to continue with them until it was time for them to go to freezer camp.

I speculate now that I was irritating the eye membranes with my "treatment" and that was exacerbating the situation. If Bramble is to the point where you are considering culling him, you might want to put him in strict isolation and leave his eye alone for a few days. If it doesn't improve on its own, then you could always cull him later.

This is not to say that eye problems should not be treated... just that sometimes "treatment" can lead to problems of its own.
 
MaggieJ":bl0b7jnf said:
To my amazement, once I stopped "treating" the eyes, they improved very quickly and before long looked perfectly normal. I was able to continue with them until it was time for them to go to freezer camp.

I speculate now that I was irritating the eye membranes with my "treatment" and that was exacerbating the situation.
Wow! :shock: I'll definitely be filing that in my repository of Things to Remember! <br /><br /> -- Wed May 13, 2015 4:20 pm -- <br /><br /> Though, in this case, the extreme worsening came after treatment was accidentally suspended.
 
Miss M":3ef6ddno said:
MaggieJ":3ef6ddno said:
To my amazement, once I stopped "treating" the eyes, they improved very quickly and before long looked perfectly normal. I was able to continue with them until it was time for them to go to freezer camp.

I speculate now that I was irritating the eye membranes with my "treatment" and that was exacerbating the situation.
Wow! :shock: I'll definitely be filing that in my repository of Things to Remember!

-- Wed May 13, 2015 4:20 pm --

Though, in this case, the extreme worsening came after treatment was accidentally suspended.

Yes, that's true, Miss M . . . and my unusual experience may have been a fluke. Just thought it worth mentioning, however. It is very easy to clean a rabbit's eye too "thoroughly". As you know, rabbit eye membranes are very delicate.
 
Wow, that's kinda embarrassing. Sorry for taking so long in updating!

But thanks to everyone who replied, all your help is very much appreciated.

I am also happy to say that prior to getting hold of some Terramycin powder, Bramble has improved greatly. While he still isn't one hundred percent yet, I'm hopeful that we'll soon have our bouncy little bunny back again :)
 
Hopefully he gets 100% back.
ffa15672742fa00b136616c35e17c068-d778kut.gif
I'm so sorry about his eyes, hope he gets better! :D
 
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