Does this make sense.

I am on an environmental forum, where people have lots of animals, and quite a few have rabbits. They have just started a thread where any little bits about health, handling etc can be posted to help others.
Having Jess with her abscess, I thought I write a bit about it as many on the forum will not be aware this is a fairly common problem.
What do you think.

"I thought this might be of interest to rabbit owners.
Hopefully your rabbit never suffers from an abscess, but the can be very common and are often linked to the pasturella virus that causes the 'snuffles' in rabbits. They are very difficult to treat, mainly because rabbit pus is very thick ( like cream cheese) and so it is hard to remove fully, leaving a pocket of infection to keep recurring.
At the moment we have a rabbit suffering from this in her dewlap, she has had an op to remove as much pus as possible, and the pus was analysed to find out what bacteria was causing the infection, it was E.coli. She also had her jaw x-rayed to check there was no infection in the bone, this can often happen in abscesses cause by teeth problems, a very common problem in rabbits. If it moves into the jaw there is nothing much to be done, other than give pallative care until the animal begins to suffer.

Usually your vet will clean the wound and give baytril, which is the only licensed antibiotic for rabbits but this is often unsuccessful.

The newest treatments include- keeping the wound open and draining the pus daily, using manuka honey, it must be above UMF 15, preferably above 20. Some vets are now using a penicillin based antibiotic, however it MUST be injected, sub cut, only, orally it will cause serious gut upset and probably kill your rabbit, so inject between the shoulder blades and wipe clean after. This is not licensed in rabbits and baytril should be tried first, but we have used it with no problems in a couple of rabbits now.
http://www.galensgarden.co.uk/herbivores/health/abscess.php

One other thing to remember, is make sure your rabbit gets pain relief after an op, many vets don't do this as a matter of course, which is unfair in my opinion. Pain will also stop a rabbit eating, and this is very serious, a rabbit will die quickly if its digestive system stops working- think of it like colic in horses."

It makes perfect sense, i found it very informative

Thank you, was everything fairly correct.

halfpenny said:

Thank you, was everything fairly correct.

Click to expand...

Made sense to me too and the bit about the penicillin injections was correct. I've used it on Flora and had great success. Let's hope your advice is well received and useful on the other forum.

From everything i have previously read everything is correct . I have *touches wood* never had an abscess bun, but if i read your advice if i did have this problem, i would find it very useful.

Sounds very helpful

I might add that giving a probiotic such as Fibreflex will help in trying to minimise the risk of gut dysbiosis in Rabbits on a 'high risk' antibiotic.

http://www.vetuk.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1180

Also if the Bun has a severe and aggressive infection and thus daily Depocillin or similar is required the Vet may want to consider prescribing QUESTRAN (Cholysteramine) to add another 'weapon' to the armoury against gut dysbiosis and consequent enterotoxaemia

http://homepage.mac.com/mattocks/morfz/questran.html

ETA I am sure this is what you meant but re the culture for MC+S its necessary to take a sample from the abscess wall rather than just the pus. Rabbit pus is often sterile so a 'false negative' is likely to be obtained.

Not wanting to sound like a know-it-all cos I DONT