Best food for weight gain??.......

Hi

I took simon, one of the rabbits i am fostering for the rspca to a diffrent vet for a second opinion yesterday as i dont think the vets the rspca insist on using are that great with rabbits!

when i first took simon to the rspca vets they diagonosed him with a grade 3 heart murmmer, gave no advice on care/ life expectancy ect

took him to my other vets and she had diagnosed him with a grade 6 heart murmer (aparently the worse you can get) as you can acualy feal vibrations when you put your hand on his side, she also thinks he could have a hole in his heart and diaphram with some of his internal organs being pushed up through the hole

the anoying thing is we dont know if the other vet has missdiagnosed the grade of the heart murmmer of if it has got worse as if it has got worse over 6 weeks then he wont have long left atall, hes only 6 months old and technicaly "shouldent have made it past day one"

Athough he sounds very ill, he is a very happy bunny, very active and eating loads, the one thing i need to do is get some weight on him as he is very skinny and not seeming to gain much weight

i have got him some junior and dawarf excel pellets as they are ment to have higher energy levels, he is also having critical care powder on his food

it was sugested that flaked peas were a good food source for helping with energy/ weight gain......is this the best thing to try or can anyone recomend something else?.....am strugling to find small quantitys of flaked peas on the net.....dont rearly need 25kg of them!

He may have only a few weeks/months left but i am trying my best to extend this as much as posible so any advice greatly apriciated

thanks

rachel

Porridge - such as oats so simple, made with water instead of milk.

I'm feeding a bun up at the moment as he lost a lot of weight over a few days. He has porrdge daily, several handfuls of pellets & mix too with the peas in - I wouldn't usually feed that, but we are anything to gain weight at the min.

My bun's hay intake has dropped though - I'm not so bothered for a few days, but obviously you don't want that to be a long-term option:?

a mix or incresed pellet intakes... flaked peas they often love... porrij oats with water warmed up and try small pieces of dried or toasted(but not burtn) bread too as not a normal bunny food can be fine in small amounts to help put on weight x.

I'm having a similar problem with my RSPCA vets and the rabbits I foster and have been getting second opinions too. I've found they seem to go for cheapness (not surprising) over quality in our case.

You can use shelled sunflower seeds to put weight on. Banana is also good too. But oats are very good. Also Critical Care helped one of my buns who lost a lot of weight. I just used to put it on a plate and she would eat it all day long.

Over in the US they have something called NutriCal which they use for putting on weight very successfully, however I have yet to find anything like that over here which is a pain because it's really good.

thanks for the replys, have made him some porriage and will try and get some flaked peas, his hay intake is fine, he eats like a small horse but is using more energy than he is consuming

heres some photos of them......simons the white one......his two brown brothers are still looking for homes!!......the other two are being homechecked this weekend so fingers crossed!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=63679&l=100e6&id=500905427

:wave: No advice that hasn't already been given, but had to say simon is gorgeous

They say not to give rabbits too many carrots as they are fattening so carrots might help? tho I suppose you would have to be aware of increased sugar content.
Is there any way you could ask Frances Harcourt Brown if she could do op to mend heart? or maybe Jason Burgess(can pm you tel nos)? I know for certain they do this op in humans. A baby with a heart murmer could progress to a serious condition in a year or so, and bearing in mind 1 human year equals 1 or 2 months of rabbit life it is quite possible that the buns condition has worsened in the last 6 weeks. There is a distinct sound to a human heart murmer that can be heard through a stethoscope, which seems to tally with the vibrations you feel on your bun Simon.
HOWEVER - some children with heart murmers continue through adulthood without having an op, so for them it is a very gradual process. Hence it does not necessarily mean that your bun has little time left.

You really need to see a rabbit savvy vet asap to get a correct diagnosis and see if an op is possible. Perhaps you would consider pioneering surgery if there were no other options?

(human)Babies with the condition lose weight as they struggle to drink/eat and get very tired. Little and often is the key to keeping weight up and it may be that this approach works for buns too? I'm glad he's still got an appetite-thats good.

I do hope that you get help for Simon very soon-best wishes -Suex

corns, it's fattening, but it is a veggie. I only give my buns corns in the summer. IN my case, I don't want them to gain wt., so I just give 3 rings (so about 8 x 3 = 24 pieces of little corn). Many yr. ago, when I don't know anything about buns, I used to give 1/3 length

the rabbit vet i took him to said there would be no chance of him surviving the operation, and aparently he would need to go on a heart bypass machine.....which dont exist for rabbits also there is the hole in his diaphram so that would need to be fixed two, he is not in a fit condition for any anasthetic and aparently any of the medication designed for dog/cat heart murmmers will have little affect once it has been digested by a rabbits gut

so i will continue to spoil him rotten.....panacking bout fireworks allready.....not sure he could cope with them :roll:

Poor guy, but at least he is going to be spoilt rotten! So whatever happens he will have had a lovely time

heart problem can easily be mis-diagnosed. 1 of my "former" less experience rabbit savvy specialist mis-diagnosed my bridge bun Monty w/ a heart problem. I then took Monty to an expert, and he confirmed there is no heart murmur problem

Here's the catch: From Ch. 10 of the BSAVA (British Small Animal Veterinary Assoc.) Manual of Rabbit Medicine and Surgery, "The most common clinical abnormality in a rabbit w/ cardiac disease is a murmur or gallop rhythm. Abnormal heart sounds are commonly most intense along the sternum or immediately to either side.

Rabbits normally have a relatively rapid respiratory rate, and lower airway sounds overlying heart sounds can mimic a murmur. The clinician should auscultate the thorax until he is able to separate breathing from valvular sounds."

I want to further pt. out that whenever you take a bun to the vet, that bun is always stressed and nervous, due to the travelling and an unfamiliar surrounding. As such, his heart rate always go up because of it.