Vet Fund

I was thinking about how Im way in my overdraft now due to having to get a new laptop, then I panicked a little realising I dont have as much left just in case Barney gets ill.

My rabbits as a child never were ill really. So I dont really know what it would cost if bunny was ill. He is vaccinated which I suppose helps...

Without being too cheeky by asking, how much do you have put aside, or how much do you reccommend I put aside for vet treatment (non routine).

Any of you that have had rabbits treated for common illnesses/diseases could you list what it costed roughly and for what illness?

I would get him insured but it doesnt seem to cover preventative things and theres an excess, plus it seems expensive (8.99 a month) as its not that likely he'll get ill.

I realise its late and noone will be up, so will bump this in the morning as well

I'm around. I can list you our approx costs so far.

Mischa - EC - several vet trips of around £40-£50 each time
dental to check for spurs - £80
mite treatment - £40 (for Mini too)

Mini - dislocated hip xrays £50 and op of £250

Nutmeg - trip to stitch up a wound from bonding £120

Smudge - two trips for stasis at £50 and £70 each

I'm sure I've forgotten something! I've seen far higher bills on here for one to two thousand!

I'd say you need an absolute minimum of £200 set aside, an emergency could very easily be more than that.

6 weeks after Rudy came to live with me he needed a dental but his mouth had become very sore, he needed nursing for a while to get him eating. The total bill was about £200, this would be a fairly common sort of occurence.

When Little Dot died of a blockage less than 10 weeks after arriving here she had emergency surgery. The total price including consultation, x-rays etc was a few pence short of £200. If she had survived after surgery it would have cost a lot more as she would have needed a lot of nursing. She would also have been prone to it happening again in the future (getting insurance at that point wouldn't cover her for intestinal problems in the future).

Artie's bladder surgery (emergency operation) cost £336.

That's someone who has six rabbits, the instances about 2 years apart. ie 50% of the rabbits during that time had those emergencies (apologies if that's not making sense it's way too late to make sense!)

Thomas had Stasis three years ago which cost just over £300 in total (worth every penny).

Snoopy's vet bills were hundreds. I'd definitely make sure you have a couple set aside especially if you need an emergency vet. Illnesses pop up really quickly and leave no time to save for money.

Good luck!

fingers crossed it stays this way or gets better, I only pay £10 a month for Mischief's teeth to be burred.

It's very difficult to say an amount, but the main thing is to bear in mind that whilst you hope your bunny won't become ill, especially if they're normally healthy - sadly it doesn't always stay that way Sometimes people might need to be able to find money somehow - whether that be their own money or borrowing etc at very short notice.

Noah our big REW has had to have 2 operations two weeks apart recently for an ear abscess & xrays - both ops came to approx £250. Last November Nala had to have her tail removed & Evie had abscesses removed from one of her eyes - cost £351.

Nala last summer also cost us around £500 for 3 ops she ended up having to have 3 abscesses removed from one of her back legs.

ETA to say we're fortunate to get 20% at our vets but none the less, ops, meds & tests etc can be very expensive especially at short notice

When my 1st Pumpkin became ill, vet bills reached £400. This was for 4/5 consults, baytril, metacam, 2 weeks worth of injections and surgery all of which were because of an abscess based at the bottom of her ear. Unfortunately, she didn't make it so another £110 was spent on her cremation and being brought back to us in an urn.
The only other emergency treatment we've had was for Dexter. He caught his eye on something and it became abscessed and infected. Thankfully, it was only small and some baytril and salt water cleared it up fine but that was after £40 at the vets.
We've also just acquired a rescue who had to be emergency spayed and for her consult and op, it was just under £100.
I'd say £200 emergency fund per bun would be a good idea. I don't have anywhere near that as my funds have just gone out the window with the rescues
Ah well... best start saving...

its a minefield! i'm trying to work out an amount to put aside monthly too but something else keeps cropping up!

when i got eric he was quite poorly and cost a LOT to get him right. now, he has 4-5 dentals per year at a cost of around £70 each.

esme needs her teeth doing 2-3 times per year but last dental she didn't react very well and became really ill which probably cost £800 to pull her through (that did include a ridiculously expensive emergency vet trip tho and i really hope i never need to use them again as they were awful).

so, not being much help here but i'd say build up around £300 for an out of hours emergency and maybe add to that each month the cost of your vaccs and any dentals pro-rata

I *had* £500 in a savings account that i no longer used so kept it as 'bunny vet fund'.

I only use it for emergencies as best i can.

That said, Ginger's eaten into it and has so far cost me ~£150 since october and i've not been able to afford to top it up much and with Biscuit having a GI slowdown a few weeks back, that knocked it hard also.

Theres currently ~£300 in there so i know i have enough to cover an 'immediate' visit but subsequent visits will have to be funded via my regular money.

I also thought "Biscuit won't ever get ill" so far i've spent over £400 on him since April 2010. So although i really hope your bunny wont ever get ill, please don't be naive or complacent

I had £1,000 in an account for buns incase any of them needed vet care. That money has now gone it was gone in 4 weeks, 3 buns became ill and I was faced with a large vet bill. If now any of them need the vets I'll have to put it on a credit card. I have one bun insured out of my 5 because all the others are over 5 and I can't insure them .

In November I spend over £700 on an operation for Poppy following an allergic reaction to penicillin (prior to this I had been paying for the penicillin for her teeth but can't remember how much that was).

In the space of a week over Christmas I spent £200 on Poppy and £300 on Peter (I thought they were both in stasis one after the other but looking back I'm thinking it may have been a virus as neither have ever had stasis before). So, that's over £1200 in 2 months!!

Luckily I am insured for some things (not Poppy's teeth). I strongly recommend you get insurance, I regret so much not getting it for Poppy when I first got her (I thought it was expensive), but for me it's such a piece of mind that if anything really bad happens you wouldn't be shelling out hundreds that you may not have.

It sounds like you need insurance. If one of your rabbits has to be admitted to the vets it will cost you hundreds of pounds. And they may need treatment multiple times per year. The excess only applies once per illness per year. As long as your rabbit is healthy and vaccinated the insurance will cover virtually everything. The only things they don't cover are vaccinations and dental trimming/burring but those are pretty cheap anyway so you should already have budgeted for them.

If you can't afford a few THOUSAND pounds on vet treatment then you NEED insurance.

Stator said:

It sounds like you need insurance. If one of your rabbits has to be admitted to the vets it will cost you hundreds of pounds. And they may need treatment multiple times per year. The excess only applies once per illness per year. As long as your rabbit is healthy and vaccinated the insurance will cover virtually everything. The only things they don't cover are vaccinations and dental trimming/burring but those are pretty cheap anyway so you should already have budgeted for them.

If you can't afford a few THOUSAND pounds on vet treatment then you NEED insurance.

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PetPlan actually do cover dental work, as long as a dental check is performed annually :wave:

and i quote

25. The cost of dental treatment unless your pet had a dental
examination carried out by a vet in the12 months before
the clinical signs of the injury or illness were first noted.

Source: http://www.petplan.co.uk/assets/pdf/terms_conditionsCFL.pdf

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I too have had vet bills in their hundreds and the last thing you need, when you're worrying about your bun is worrying about money.

I personally have paid for insurance for the past 10 years for each of my buns. Sometimes months, and for some rabbits years will go by and you think it's a waste but then one day your bun may not be well and within another few days you're looking at a couple of hundred pounds. I've had Jasper for 3 years, he's only visited the vets for vaccinations until the past two weeks and over Xmas and all I've had to bother about on the financial side was the excess of £50, and the vet bill totalled this within a week.

That said insurance has gone up and I know someone who has their cat insured for less, this is just because the insurance for cats and dogs in more competitive though....don't get me started on that! Lol

I know some people's opinions differ to mine but I would rather have insurance and say to the vet go on and give my rabbit everything to make it better, or 'whatever it takes to find out what's wrong' than have sit down first of all and have to worry about money on top of the distress of having a poorly animal.

I've had bad money troubles over the years and I'm digging myself out of this hole. However, I wouldn't have been able to give my rabbbits the best treament available without insurance.

I would say however that you should perhaps have your rabbit insured from as early on as possible. If your rabbit has had something wrong and it's not insured and within a year you decide to take insurance out, the insurers won't cover you for that illness, until a year has passed without it reocurring.

It can be a confusing decision to make. Good Luck and let us all know what you decide.xx

karen354 said:

I had £1,000 in an account for buns incase any of them needed vet care. That money has now gone it was gone in 4 weeks, 3 buns became ill and I was faced with a large vet bill. If now any of them need the vets I'll have to put it on a credit card. I have one bun insured out of my 5 because all the others are over 5 and I can't insure them .

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Hi. When you say you cant insure them over 5, is this because you hadn't had them insured prior to this age? I had my rabbit insured until she died and she was 8. Allbeit her excess got higher at a quicker rate compared to the younger buns'.
xx

marmitesmum; said:

Hi. When you say you cant insure them over 5, is this because you hadn't had them insured prior to this age? I had my rabbit insured until she died and she was 8. Allbeit her excess got higher at a quicker rate compared to the younger buns'.
xx

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Yes i only looked into insurance 3 months ago so not had any of the insured before then. I couldn't insure my E.C bun either.

if you have no money for emergencies i really think you need insurance, even if its only while you save up a nice little vet fund.

Alvin has been to the emergency vets 3 times with stasis and the average cost was 350 quid.

Pearl's enlarged heart cost over 800 quid in total for investigations as to why she wasnt breathing right and medicine and checkups for the remainder of her short life

both bunnies were perfectly healthy when they came to live with me but we never can tell whats lurking in these delicate creatures

donnamt said:

Alvin has been to the emergency vets 3 times with stasis and the average cost was 350 quid.
(

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Have they ever spent a while deciding whether or not to pay out for stasis? They paid straight away for both Esme and Elijah stasis episodes in the past but they are taking ages to decide whether or not to pay for Elijah's stasis a couple of months ago. Total cost was £140 but they have now sent me 3 letters saying that they need more info from the vets :? I can't weigh it up, he wasn't eating, vets admitted him got him eating, classis stasis episode :?

Bunny Buddy said:

Have they ever spent a while deciding whether or not to pay out for stasis? They paid straight away for both Esme and Elijah stasis episodes in the past but they are taking ages to decide whether or not to pay for Elijah's stasis a couple of months ago. Total cost was £140 but they have now sent me 3 letters saying that they need more info from the vets :? I can't weigh it up, he wasn't eating, vets admitted him got him eating, classis stasis episode :?

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never had any trouble with any of the claims even the blood tests to see why he stops eating were paid without question