Poo!

Hi all

What colour should healthy bun poo be? My boys, who never ever had a tummy upset had quite dark hard poos. They were fed on veg in the morning, bedded on hay so there was always that available and a bowl of allen and page pellets in the evening. This was supplemented by treats from the eat naturals range and dried cranberries.

Sprocket and Widget, who get fresh hay every day including forage types and the same amount of veg in the morning, but with much reduced pellets in the evening (at present a mix of the stuff they were on, not sure which brand, poss excel, and my allen and page) tend to produce much softer golden coloured poos which sort of fall apart quite easily if you pinch them. I presume ths is good because it shows they are eating more hay?

However, Widget had a dirty bum a few days after I got them (she hasn't since) and I also still find the odd uneaten special poo plus the occsional miss-formed squishy looking normal poos which seem to contain quite a lot of moisture (approx 1-2 a day). Both seem to be bright and healthy eating normally and producing plenty of normally formed golden poos as well. They are booked in for vacs next saturday so I will be asking the vet about this but if anyone has any advice in the meantime please let me know.

Thanks,

Jo

Poo colour seems to depend on the type and amount of hay and grass they eat.

Zero used to leave his special poos, so I cut his pellets down to 10 a day, vastly reduced the amount of veg I give him, especially kale and parsley. It took a few weeks for his stomach to settle but it has *touch wood* worked.

How long have you had Sprocket and Widget? If you haven't had them long the squishy poos could mean they had a bad diet previously?

I believe the golden poos are the ideal colour! I bet you'll get loads of poo pics posted now!

They tend to get darker and harder if they eat more grass than hay - like wild rabbits.

The dirty bum could have just been from the stress of a new home and a change in diet? I don't know about the other poos... I'm not a poo expert!

xxx

Kittykat23uk said:

Hi all

What colour should healthy bun poo be? My boys, who never ever had a tummy upset had quite dark hard poos. They were fed on veg in the morning, bedded on hay so there was always that available and a bowl of allen and page pellets in the evening. This was supplemented by treats from the eat naturals range and dried cranberries.

Sprocket and Widget, who get fresh hay every day including forage types and the same amount of veg in the morning, but with much reduced pellets in the evening (at present a mix of the stuff they were on, not sure which brand, poss excel, and my allen and page) tend to produce much softer golden coloured poos which sort of fall apart quite easily if you pinch them. I presume ths is good because it shows they are eating more hay?

However, Widget had a dirty bum a few days after I got them (she hasn't since) and I also still find the odd uneaten special poo plus the occsional miss-formed squishy looking normal poos which seem to contain quite a lot of moisture (approx 1-2 a day). Both seem to be bright and healthy eating normally and producing plenty of normally formed golden poos as well. They are booked in for vacs next saturday so I will be asking the vet about this but if anyone has any advice in the meantime please let me know.

Thanks,

Jo

Click to expand...

Anything from light golden brown to dark brown - the question to be asked is what size and how many droppings should bun produce! and has there been any change from normal.

A bun eating vast quantities of hay and little wet vegetation (grass included) will produce large golden droppings that fracture easily. A bun eating mostly grass - out to graze all day will produce the same quantity of droppings but smaller and darker with a stronger smell and often more pointed in shape than perfectly round. This is fine too - there is a difference in the quantity of indigestible long stranded fibre that is eliminated as waste material. Grass and greens have less waste fibre than hay and a higher water content so the poos will be darker and smaller - but the quantity should remain the same.

Warning signs for ileus are smaller and less droppings which are drier in composition and any changes to the normal pattern.

Warning signs for dysbiosis are excess caecotrophs at one end of the scale going up to malformed caecotroph splats at the other.

Fur passing through the gut will appear as droppings strung together or long malformed waste droppings of peculiar shape - this can also be a change in bowel rhythm.

Any mucus coating normal droppings is often a sign of inflammation of the bowel somewhere.

Thanks for the information. We got them on 15th July. Widget had a mucky bum on the 21st and we've had a few miss-formed poos and uneaten special poos from I think, Sprocket, as described above. About a week or more (can't recall exactly), ago Sprocket also had a bit of thick sticky mucous around one normal poo, but I've not seen this again.

In terms of veg and things, I've given them the following since we got them (not all at once, obviously, just a few leaves of one or more of these a day):

first week or two we had them I gave them some Hazel, wild rose leaves, hawthorn, and one day they got a couple of twigs of redcurrant leaves.

Since then I don't think they've had any of the above, but I have given them:
bramble,
Dandelions
Grass
plantain
Sage
Marjoram
Rosemary
Strawberry leaves
Self Heal

Veggies they've had
Spring Greens - staple about 4-5 large ones between them daily.
Carrot - occasional approx 1 between them weekly
Carrot tops- one week, daily until we ran out.
Broccolli- a few florets daily when I had some
Courgette- which they decided they didn't like, so a gfew mouthfuls.
Pointed cabbage- mixing this in with the greens at present- daily since Friday.
Green pepper- Between them they had one over the space of a week- seemed to produce smaller black poos- last week.
very few dried cranberries (maybe two or three over the past week).

Freely available Hay mixed with some Forage/readygrass - not feeding readygrass every day though, about twice a week they've had a sprinkle on their hay).

Daily- an egg cup worth of Pellets as described above.

They have this week been eating their way through a parsley bell which I got around the 28th july from Hay experts, so perhaps that has affected them. It's nearly gone now so I'll not get another one for a while.

ETA: they are not out on grass. Also, one evening we caught Sprocket munching on a houseplant, Dracaena Marginata. I don't think he got more that a mouthful down and I don't think it coincided with one of the poo events described, but it's worth bearing in mind and we're making sure he doesn't get the chance for seconds...

All the best

Jo

Kittykat23uk said:

Thanks for the information. We got them on 15th July. Widget had a mucky bum on the 21st and we've had a few miss-formed poos and uneaten special poos from I think, Sprocket, as described above. About a week or more (can't recall exactly), ago Sprocket also had a bit of thick sticky mucous around one normal poo, but I've not seen this again.

In terms of veg and things, I've given them the following since we got them (not all at once, obviously, just a few leaves of one or more of these a day):

first week or two we had them I gave them some Hazel, wild rose leaves, hawthorn, and one day they got a couple of twigs of redcurrant leaves.

Since then I don't think they've had any of the above, but I have given them:
bramble,
Dandelions
Grass
plantain
Sage
Marjoram
Rosemary
Strawberry leaves
Self Heal

Veggies they've had
Spring Greens - staple about 4-5 large ones between them daily.
Carrot - occasional approx 1 between them weekly
Carrot tops- one week, daily until we ran out.
Broccolli- a few florets daily when I had some
Courgette- which they decided they didn't like, so a gfew mouthfuls.
Pointed cabbage- mixing this in with the greens at present- daily since Friday.
Green pepper- Between them they had one over the space of a week- seemed to produce smaller black poos- last week.
very few dried cranberries (maybe two or three over the past week).

Freely available Hay mixed with some Forage/readygrass - not feeding readygrass every day though, about twice a week they've had a sprinkle on their hay).

Daily- an egg cup worth of Pellets as described above.

They have this week been eating their way through a parsley bell which I got around the 28th july from Hay experts, so perhaps that has affected them. It's nearly gone now so I'll not get another one for a while.

ETA: they are not out on grass. Also, one evening we caught Sprocket munching on a houseplant, Dracaena Marginata. I don't think he got more that a mouthful down and I don't think it coincided with one of the poo events described, but it's worth bearing in mind and we're making sure he doesn't get the chance for seconds...

All the best

Jo

Click to expand...

What a lovely selection of food they get! :thumb:

The ones I have put in bold are the veggies most likely to cause excess caecotrophs in sensitive tum rabbits. Poppy can not tolerate any brassica apart from calabrese and brocoli in small amounts.

I would be inclined to cut these out and replace with the alternatives you have listed for a few weeks and see what happens to the droppings, esp the excess caeotrophs. You may find that too much veg alongside pellets as well means your buns aren't eating as much hay as they might.

Thanks for the advice. I'll give it a try.

More diet questions

Hi everyone.

I have a few questions/concerns about my buns. Sprocket is still producing a few excess caecotrophs, plus some of his normal poos are a bit darker and wetter than the normal golden hay poos (but he's producing a lot of those too). I think, the latest bout was because I gave him a bit of apple (about a quarter of a small one). So I'm stopping that immediately.

This week they've had mainly one large handful of plantain, grass and dandelions for breakfast, with either 1 small carrot between them or some broccoli florets, plus the occasional spring green leaf (I've really cut back on these, they've hardly had any this week). They've also had the odd sprig of herbs or bramble/strawberry leaf and one day I gave them a small piece of beetroot to try. They continue to be given fresh hay every day (I fill an underbed storage box).

In the evenings, when they come indoors they get more hay in their trays, but they seem really hungry. They practically took an apple out of my mouth. Sprocket begs for food like a dog and Ian gives him some broccoli from the fridge- it's really difficult to ignore him:roll:. They've also had a very small amount (like 4 or 5 pieces each) of dried fruit from trail mix (banana, papaya, raisin or cranberries). In the evenings when they go to bed I scatter about an egg cup worth of allen and page mixed with the remains of the pellets I was given in their kennel for them to forage, plus I top up the hay. Plus they get about 8 of the Excell tasty nuggets with oregano, between them, in their pet carrier to get them into it to be taken back outside.

I really don't know what to do, I had to give Sprocket a bath this morning, because he was a little bit matted under his tail (not really bad at all, but I felt it best to loosen the fur a little). Now I think he hates me. He doesn't like being picked up but I keep having to check his bum.

Any thoughts?

Many thanks

Jo