E cuniculi

My rabbit has been treated with panacur for 28 days this coming Friday but it does not have seemed to have helped him a great deal.I was just wondering if there is any other treatment that i could try to help him.He is off his back legs and has lost an awful lot of weight, i dont know if some of this is due to the fact that he cant turn around to eat his cecotropes.Any help would be appreciated.Thank you

paul f said:

My rabbit has been treated with panacur for 28 days this coming Friday but it does not have seemed to have helped him a great deal.I was just wondering if there is any other treatment that i could try to help him.He is off his back legs and has lost an awful lot of weight, i dont know if some of this is due to the fact that he cant turn around to eat his cecotropes.Any help would be appreciated.Thank you

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If your rabbit has had EC for some time it is possible that he has some granulomas causing nerve damage which may not repair. Our vet sometimes tries steroids to help shrink the granuloma and has had varying success. Steroids are not recommended for some buns as it can cause long term damage in their own right.

He had a course of steroids 2 a day for 1 week and then reduced to 1 a day for the next week.He did quite well after this for about a week but then went backwards again.

I have an e.cuniculi bun too at the moment! Jess didn't show many signs of improving until last week but luckily she's been up on her feet and mobile the whole time, just very wobbly.

It seems like the course of action for e.cuniculi is a bit of an unknown... my vet has told me about several different time lengths and meds to treat it. I've researched and found that 28 days is the most commonly suggested time frame but also found web pages that suggest up to eight weeks :shock:

Jess is on day 27 of Panacur and Meloxodyl but still isn't 100% so I've decided I'm going to give her Panacur for another week, after bleaching (carefully! This will be the 3rd time I've bleached everything, I think I'm getting OCD! :lol her cage and all her stuff in case she was getting reinfected from something and see how she is after then. I don't want to take her off her medication, only for her to relapse a few weeks later. :?

Jess wouldn't eat much to start with either. She's been getting muesli instead of her usual boring pellts, loads of broccoli and apple and rich tea biscuits! Anything to get her to eat! Thankfully, she's regained her appetite now.

I really hope your rabbit gets better soon! :wave:

Have any diagnostics been carried out ?

Has a non steroidal anti-inflammatory been prescribed once the steroids were discontinued ?

Thanks for both of your replies,help from everyone is greatly appreciated.He didnt do any diagnostics at the vet but this may be due to the fact that i have been out of work since the beginning of December and the vet trying to keep the bills down.When he came off the steroids the vet didnt prescribe any metacam but when hetook aturn for the worse on monday i had some metacam from a previous prescription and started him on it ,almost straight away his appetite came back and he is eating quite well but i fear the worse because he cant stand up and is just lying down even to eat, we also have a problem with him ditying himself and are constantly having to clean him which doesnt help with the stress factor.Any help would be appreciated.Thank you.

I also have a bun with EC at the minute. How messy is he? I clipped the fur a bit around my bun's rear end, get the vet to do this if you're not comfortable as the skin is very delicate and easy to nip. I didn't clip it all the way down, just enough to stop it getting all stuck together.

I also found that childrens nappies work wonders in the rough stages, I used the asda smartprice ones and with a bit of trimming they work great. Keeping him dry is the best thing, bunnies are prone to urine scald on their legs which can be a big problem, another reason why you don't want to cut all the fur off.

Vinnie has had her 28 days of panacur and is currently on another course as it seemed to have gone but has reared its ugly head again. Georgie_f's thread is http://forums.rabbitrehome.org.uk/showthread.php?t=215679 which you may find helpful as it covers a lot of EC questions.

I would ask your vet for Metacam, he should be on this as a matter of course just for pain relief. Dosing it yourself isn't the best idea with a poorly bun, especially if he's lost weight, it's always better to double check. That way the vet knows what he's on too.

The main thing you can do for your bun it to make him comfortable. Make his bedding area as soft as possible in case of any falls, I pad the edges of mine with cheap rolled-up towels. If you find any caecotropes, put them somewhere he can reach them. Give anything he'll eat, it's hard to make an ill bun put weight on and Vin is getting lots of stuff I wouldn't normally feed her in large dosages just to get her to eat. Best of luck, please ask if you need to know anything else. :wave:

I would just like to thank everyone who was kind enough to help with the problem with my rabbit, i took him back to the vet this morning and the prognosis was not good and the vet said that the kindest thing would be to put him to sleep.He was a beautiful rabbit, honey in colour,a continental giant who used to frighten our dog who is a cross border collie.Over the few weeks he has had ec he has lost a large amount of weight and in the end was such a sorry sight and i feel he is now better off.It seems that ec is a major problem with rabbits after reading so many posts on the forum and i think that it is so difficult to know when to say enough is enough and put the animal out of its suffering.It seems that the problem with ec is that there does not seem to be a complete cure for it and in many cases it keeps re occuring, i think the main thing is to catch it early but in many cases the symptoms are that varied it is not noticed until it is too late.The other problem seems to be that a lot of rabbits will show ec results in blood tests without actually showing any symptoms.Anyway thanks once again for everyone involved in this wonderful forum and it is refreshing to see so many loving people that are prepared to help each other to look after their animals, our bun will be sadly missed.paul f

So sorry to hear this, you know he's out of his pain now. Binky free bunny.

We have a section called Rainbow Bridge where we remember rabbits we've lost if you'd like to make a post.
http://forums.rabbitrehome.org.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=35

I am sorry