What do I do? Buck injury getting worse!

I posted about how I had all 3 bucks in the same pen. I noticed one had a scrape - literally, just a tiny piece of peeled skin - on his testicle and at the advice I got here about colonies, I moved him shortly thereafter.

I checked on him the other day, and the bloodless "scrape" had turned into a very nasty scab. I gently pressed on the area, and he showed no signs of discomfort, was eating/drinking/acting normally. I assumed it looked worse than it was.

Same for yesterday.

Checked again today and it appears to be abscessing. I'm so sad...of our initial 6, he was our favorite and top pick to receive "pet" status. We initially thought he was a she (whoops). Had I known he was a buck from the start, we would have moved him to pet earlier.

Here are pictures from the scab on the first day. I'm having a hard time getting a clear pic of the potential abscess. It's white and warm (but not hot), a bit springy, looks like (sorry for the visual) hardened pudding. Still no signs of discomfort when I touch the area.

What do we do? These are meant for meat. Should we just cull now and save him the misery or see how he does over the course of a few days?



(PS: ignore the weird poop, belongs to chickens.)

you should lance it, i can almost guarantee it is full of puss, honestly, probably just process it. Unless you feel its worth it to try to heal him just to eat him.

How do I lance it? Same as I would for one of my kids - sewing needle sterilized with rubbing alcohol then fire? Drain then rub down with alcohol? Or would it be better to use a sterilized utility blade?

__________ Sun May 19, 2013 6:04 pm __________

Ugh. Nevermind. I just did a quick Google and realized this is probably closer to a hospital-visit-worthy human abscess that requires pushing/draining than a run of the mill cut infection.

I can handle a small amount of puss. I will vomit if I have to express a large amount, especially given the description of rabbit puss I found.

Poor guy. =(

__________ Sun May 19, 2013 6:38 pm __________

So we've decided to cull. His behavior isn't totally out of whack, but I have noticed he's testier than usual. I don't want to prolong his suffering on the off chance he'd recover on his own.

A friend just told me she wouldn't consider a rabbit with an infection fit to eat. I need advice from meat breeders. What would you do?<br /><br />__________ Sun May 19, 2013 9:04 pm __________<br /><br />Are these healthy lungs? I've looked at pictures, but still don't know how to judge. My boyfriend says they are.

rabbit looks pretty normal, what did the infection end up looking like? How bad it is is how I would base whether to eat or not. You said it was on the testes so I wouldn't see it as to much of a concern, I wouldn't eat the organs but the rest should be fine, if your worried soak the carcass in salt water for a couple of days or discard.

We discarded the entire back half of the carcass - hips down. I wasn't certain how far into the tissue the infection had gone. We took him out of his hutch at 4PM and slaughtered at 7:30. I figured that would give him time to get slightly cleaned out - not entirely, obviously, but at least a bladder running on low.

Oh, no. His bladder was so full I almost couldn't remove it without spilling urine. His stomach was packed. His intestines were packed. We removed the whole back package, and toothpaste-like goo started to ooze out. The end of the entrails were completely non-removable.

I'm no autopsy expert, but it seemed to me the infection had blocked his whole lower-half. Poor guy.

The lungs do not look normal to me. They should be a pale pink color, with no areas of discoloration.

I had a house rabbit years ago that had an abscess in her eye which was Pasteurella, and I culled my herd sire due to an abscess. Perhaps I am paranoid, but if a rabbit has an abscess I automatically suspect Pasteurella as the cause.

I think you did the right thing to cull him, painful as I'm sure it was for you.

RJSchaefer":2y1576ja said:

His bladder was so full I almost couldn't remove it without spilling urine.

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Once you have dispatched the rabbit, you can express the bladder by pressing down on the groin area, pushing toward the genitalia.

RJSchaefer":2y1576ja said:

A friend just told me she wouldn't consider a rabbit with an infection fit to eat.

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As long as you aren't eating infected tissue and the meat is cooked thoroughly, the meat is safe to eat.

However, most of us raise our own meat so that we will be eating the best and healthiest animals available. An animal that is ill or fighting infection will have elevated levels of adrenaline and other physiological responses that render it a less than ideal meat source, but in most cases it wont do any lasting harm to you if you eat it.

In a survival situation, I wouldn't hesitate to eat the carcass, but in my current situation where I have other food sources readily available, the carcass would likely go to the cats, dogs, or chickens.

I'm confused. I thought pasteurella was a disease. Can wound abscesses be caused by it as well? If so, can it then morph into "snuffles"?

Sometimes a wound can cause an abscess, but in rabbits the pus is always pasty and thick. I personally suspect that Pasteurella is opportunistic and the resulting pus indicates Pasteurella infection. I don't know if anyone has ever cultured the pus resulting from a wound to check that theory though.

I do not know if the form of "P" can morph from abscess to respiratory form. I was worried about that when I culled Black Floyd.

They should be a pale pink color, with no areas of discoloration.

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I think that is just blood in the lungs due to the method of cull and a trick of the camera. They look fine to me. They seem smooth and without any 'hills' or lumps in them that would indicate pockets of infection.

I'm confused. I thought pasteurella was a disease. Can wound abscesses be caused by it as well?

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Yes

if a rabbit has an abscess I automatically suspect Pasteurella as the cause.

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This infection was started from a bite wound to the testes when an new male, who had been living with females, was caged with two other bucks. It is not a spontanious abcess that can be caused by systemic pasturella. Although pasturella may have been one of the bactrium that invaded the wound.

can it then morph into "snuffles"?

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Not likely in this case, but if you have a rabbit that gets an abcess for no known reason, then it may be hiding a internal pasturella infection.

it seemed to me the infection had blocked his whole lower-half.

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It just goes to show you how well rabbits can hide illness and this is why it is highly recommended that bucks be housed individually. It sounds like the infection spread through the inguinal canal and into the abdomen.

Thanks for the clarification, Dood. I had to look up "inguinal canal", but that's about what I think happened. When the goo started to come out of his anus (do rabbits have anuses? I need to study some anatomy!), my boyfriend said it was very strange looking poop. I said nope, that's pus. Yummy.

I had noticed he wasn't defecating when we removed him from the shed. He sat in a cage on the porch, and not a single pellet or drop of urine in 3.5 hours. I know he'd eaten and drank earlier, so it was an indicator to me that he was sicker than he was letting on.

Whew, RJ, sounds like you are definitely getting a crash course in rabbit husbandry! Glad you put the poor guy out of his misery! With the amount of spread of the infection, I agree that I would toss the carcass too ... the lungs do look healthy, but I question the bright red places. Like Dood said, it could be an artifact of the photography coupled with the dispatch method, but I didn't see where you mentioned your dispatch method? It also doesn't look like you rinsed the lungs before photographing.

I just did another 9 this weekend and no internal issues with any of them (I don't want them, but on the other hand, I would like to be familiar with some, ya know what I mean?) ... I use blunt force to the back of the head for dispatch, then chop the head with a hatchet, so sometimes the heart is burst, but always the lungs do not have the red blotches. YMMV

My boyfriend used a pellet gun, his Whisper, I believe. It was not as clean as we would have liked, he didn't aim high enough on the poor buck's neck. It was still quick, less than 15-20 seconds of twitching, but it was full body twitching rather than just the hind legs. He wasn't hung for about 5 minutes, so he didn't bleed completely.

I did rinse, but not very well. I've only dispatched chickens so far and have learned with them to not handle the lungs too much lest I end up with pink slurry. Considering that, I tried to keep the touching of his lungs to a minimum. They were smooth. The color was what concerned me. The boyfriend was certain they were healthy.

How sad. I really don't want to discard what we kept of the carcass. He was quite the meaty guy. I'll have to give this some more thought.<br /><br />__________ Tue May 21, 2013 1:05 am __________<br /><br />I really missed MartyAnn today when I was feeding the others. He was super sweet. Really hit the jackpot with him, then Skipper had to bite his nut off.

Is the way of things, but it sure it tough. Didn't think the first one would be like this. =(

As far as lung colour goes I check what they look like BEFORE I remove them from the carcass as I fail miserably at not squishing them to goo when I take them out and they always look awful and blotchy.
Those lungs look like they're fine to me.

"Snuffles" is what respiratory pasteurellosis is commonly referred to as. Systemic pasteurellosis is what usually causes abcesses under the skin and inside the body cavity in certain areas.