We have a meat colony consisting of 20 does and a buck, along with young kits (probably around 25 right now) and fryers in grow out hutches ( currently about 50). So a lot of rabbits. We raised them for years before we moved, sold them all before we left, and have had the current "herd" for over a year. I have never seen anything like this... but then again I have never had so many total numbers of rabbits, and we now live in S. Louisiana... they have some crazy stuff down here when it comes to diseases and parasites.
All was fine until about two months ago, we noticed some blood on one of the bunk feeders in the colony, looked everyone over and found one of my best does had a huge growth in the inner corner of her eye. It came up really fast, within a few days. It was irregular shaped, weepy and prone to bleed, and about the size of a quarter. I quarantined her for a few days, applied topical ointment, flushed out the eye... and it was obviously not improving so we put her down. About a week later we found two kits from the same litter, about six weeks old, with large subcutaneous lumps. One baby had four on it's back and sides, the other had one on it's foot. I started doing some research and these appeared to be warbles, solid slightly oblong lumps right under the skin, about the size of a green grape. I did not try to remove them, hoping they would erupt on their own, but they grew so big and nasty we decided to put those two down as well. Two weeks ago I found another young kit with a lump in it's hind leg, somewhere within the thigh muscle. This one grew to about the size of a hens egg, the poor guy could no longer hop and was put down. Now just yesterday, I went to feed the fryers and found a baby with a huge lump on his nose, this one looks very similar to the original doe's lump, irregular and weepy, and it too has come up very fast... it was not noticeable even two days ago. Other than the lump he does not appear sick, none of the rabbits do. They are all extremely healthy, much more than any rabbits I have raised in the hutch, we don't even get ear mites, and I have never had this kind of production from my rabbits before, just babies everywhere. This sounds like a lot of sick rabbits.. but if I crunch the numbers I'm looking at about 5 out of 100... and that is not counting the huge number of fryers that have already been processed this spring. any ideas what the heck is going on? From my research the warbles are pretty common in this area if that is what they were, like I said they have crazy nasty parasites here. But the other tumors are really freaking me out. The doe I could understand, she was older... but babies do not just get tumors normally...
Another problem we have found is a Rex strain in our colony. We had one litter of curlies... thought they were cute, but they had some pretty serious problems. One wasn't right mentally, it appeared to be retarded and walked funny although otherwise healthy, and we lost three more before they were grown (out of a litter of six), one of those for certain had a seizure, I witnessed it. We have had one more litter that had two curlies in it, and both of those died by 12 weeks, one was found dead, the other was an other seizure. Again this is a very small percentage of our actual babies, but has anyone heard of the Rex gene carrying lethal genetic faults? I would cull the doe, but unfortunately I'm not exactly sure who she is, and many of our does co-parent or foster kits from others so even if she is nursing them, it doesn't mean she is genetically linked.
I appreciate any feedback.
All was fine until about two months ago, we noticed some blood on one of the bunk feeders in the colony, looked everyone over and found one of my best does had a huge growth in the inner corner of her eye. It came up really fast, within a few days. It was irregular shaped, weepy and prone to bleed, and about the size of a quarter. I quarantined her for a few days, applied topical ointment, flushed out the eye... and it was obviously not improving so we put her down. About a week later we found two kits from the same litter, about six weeks old, with large subcutaneous lumps. One baby had four on it's back and sides, the other had one on it's foot. I started doing some research and these appeared to be warbles, solid slightly oblong lumps right under the skin, about the size of a green grape. I did not try to remove them, hoping they would erupt on their own, but they grew so big and nasty we decided to put those two down as well. Two weeks ago I found another young kit with a lump in it's hind leg, somewhere within the thigh muscle. This one grew to about the size of a hens egg, the poor guy could no longer hop and was put down. Now just yesterday, I went to feed the fryers and found a baby with a huge lump on his nose, this one looks very similar to the original doe's lump, irregular and weepy, and it too has come up very fast... it was not noticeable even two days ago. Other than the lump he does not appear sick, none of the rabbits do. They are all extremely healthy, much more than any rabbits I have raised in the hutch, we don't even get ear mites, and I have never had this kind of production from my rabbits before, just babies everywhere. This sounds like a lot of sick rabbits.. but if I crunch the numbers I'm looking at about 5 out of 100... and that is not counting the huge number of fryers that have already been processed this spring. any ideas what the heck is going on? From my research the warbles are pretty common in this area if that is what they were, like I said they have crazy nasty parasites here. But the other tumors are really freaking me out. The doe I could understand, she was older... but babies do not just get tumors normally...
Another problem we have found is a Rex strain in our colony. We had one litter of curlies... thought they were cute, but they had some pretty serious problems. One wasn't right mentally, it appeared to be retarded and walked funny although otherwise healthy, and we lost three more before they were grown (out of a litter of six), one of those for certain had a seizure, I witnessed it. We have had one more litter that had two curlies in it, and both of those died by 12 weeks, one was found dead, the other was an other seizure. Again this is a very small percentage of our actual babies, but has anyone heard of the Rex gene carrying lethal genetic faults? I would cull the doe, but unfortunately I'm not exactly sure who she is, and many of our does co-parent or foster kits from others so even if she is nursing them, it doesn't mean she is genetically linked.
I appreciate any feedback.