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life span of a dental bun?

ChloeLawless

Mama Doe
I was wondering out of curiosity and also pure worry, what the general life span of an otherwise healthy dental bunny is? If any...

Lily is one and she has problems with spurs...and I have been told today she has rather untidy teeth in general but they dont cause her any pain and she is otherwise fine right now and behaving normally.

My friend and I got our buns checked today at a free clinic and the nurse told me she was otherwise ok and may need a dental in about 6 weeks which i expected. She then said "She is fine other than that so just enjoy her..." and she had also commented on how young she was to have such teeth problems.

I feed her plenty of hay etc so its obviously something she has been born with.

But the nurses words of "enjoy her" really worried me...I dont want her to have a shortened life due to it. I keep on top of her dentals and I always look out for signs of her having trouble..will doing this mean she can be a normal healthy bun? Apart from the teethy troubles of course...

I dont want to even harbour the thought of not having much time with my baby :(:(
 
I think their lives are shortend...well thats what I have been led to believe.. and tbh Jazz is going downhill so fast, but he does have other problems too.
 
i had a dental bun who lived to be over 8 years old. when i had to have him pts it wasn't anything related to his teeth.
 
thank you for the replies. So I assume it depends on the bunny really. I just got rather worried seeing as Lily is still quite young. I have already been close to losing her once already and I don't want to have to face that again any time soon :(

I'm setting up a special dental bank account just for her on tuesday :)
 
You cannot generalise wirh dental bunnies

If the problems are kept in check there is no need to expect their lives to be shortened

but if they have genetic dental probs including mis-shapen jaw or similar, then this can mean they are more likely to have inherited other genetic problems through bad breeding ..thus shortenng their lives.

We have Hettie here who arrived with lots of probs..damaged tear ducts which means her eyes constantly run and bad molars..but she has been with us for over 2 years now and still seems fine.
So yes ..enjoy the time with your bunny..it could be a very long time!:D
 
Thank you Jill :)

I was told she had un even teeth, so I am guessing they're all quite wonky in there but she hasn't any jaw problems and my usual vet has never pointed out anything terrible..so I am hoping I'm keeping it regular enough for anything untoward to be picked up on straight away :) x
 
I don't think that molar spurs necessarily shorten their lives at all, but once tooth roots become elongated it becomes more of a problem. And when abscess develop the outlook isn't great.

So I guess it really depends on the problem :)
 
You cannot generalise wirh dental bunnies

If the problems are kept in check there is no need to expect their lives to be shortened

but if they have genetic dental probs including mis-shapen jaw or similar, then this can mean they are more likely to have inherited other genetic problems through bad breeding ..thus shortenng their lives.

We have Hettie here who arrived with lots of probs..damaged tear ducts which means her eyes constantly run and bad molars..but she has been with us for over 2 years now and still seems fine.
So yes ..enjoy the time with your bunny..it could be a very long time!:D

Maybe this is why I have been told Jazz's life will be shortend :cry: he has a slightly mishapen jaw.
 
My dwarf lop was a dental bunny, he died at 9 and a half years old, he had to have dental treatment every 2 months :(
 
I think it really does depend on the bunny - our Roscoe was a dental bunny, he had sever maloclusion & molar spurs that no amount of hay / grass would keep down :cry: He had about 18 dentals in the 5 years we had him & he was about 7 years when we lost him - you can't say all dental bunnies will not have long happy lives :)
 
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