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Is it me...?

marmitesmum

Warren Scout
I've just come back from the vets a little miffed and yet puzzled by something one of the nurses said to me.

After seeing the vet and going to the pharmacy to pick up some Metacam, the nurse said "right ok so that's twice a day with a 4kg dosage. You'll need to make sure he eats before each dose" to which I replied "he's a rabbit", her reaction was "oh well then you probably can't always tell if they've eaten anything"....what the hell!

For starters yes I CAN tell if my rabbit has eaten, what kind of owner would I be if I didn't! And when I said "he's a rabbit" I meant, they're always eating...they graze! OMG!

Sorry rant over, but surely a vet nurse would know!
 
You'd think wouldn't you. Considering you see the nurse when you get a new pet usually for a check up and advice. Mind you most vets don't know. :censored:
 
Depends really. Some of our dental buns will only eat soaked pellets and literally nothing else. If they run out of food, they could easily be taking meds on an empty stomach....but I get what you mean with most normal rabs! :lol:
 
Some vet nurses are very rabbit savvy. Some vets employ nurses who are not qualified or registered, they call them nurses as opposed to veterinary nurses, some vets have just one qualified registered VN the rest are either unqualified nurses or trainees.
 
From what I know she's a qualified Vet Nurse. I think that's what bothered me tbh.

I don't think she was paying attention really as she asked me how I wanted to pay, when it says on the account I've got an insurance claim in.
 
She probably just said it without thinking, I'm sure it's quite a standard thing to say about dogs or cats and I guess they see many more of those than they do rabbits.:)
 
I've just come back from the vets a little miffed and yet puzzled by something one of the nurses said to me.

After seeing the vet and going to the pharmacy to pick up some Metacam, the nurse said "right ok so that's twice a day with a 4kg dosage.

That seems high??? Or am I reading this wrong? :?
 
That seems high??? Or am I reading this wrong? :?

No your not. It is high! He was on a 3kg once a day, then 5kg, now this! It's a last effort before Xrays. They can't feel anything wrong with his front leg apart from stiffness in his shoulder, but he's holding it funny more and more, and flinching more when it's checked. It's a long story really, he stopped eating before Xmas and has only just started to put weight back on in the past couple of weeks so they don't want to put him under for Xrays until he's put a bit more weight on in case the trauma stops him from eating again, but I said if it's left much longer he could stop eating because of whatever it is that's wrong with the leg. So they've given me that dose for another week, if he puts weight on his leg I'm to gradually reduce it and see if he get's better, if this dose doesn't work, or if it comes back after the dose is reduced it's xray time.

Like I say a loooong story, it's a what came first scenario, the urine infection, the leg problem or the gastric stasis. God knows what pet plan will think of the claim!
 
No your not. It is high! He was on a 3kg once a day, then 5kg, now this! It's a last effort before Xrays. They can't feel anything wrong with his front leg apart from stiffness in his shoulder, but he's holding it funny more and more, and flinching more when it's checked. It's a long story really, he stopped eating before Xmas and has only just started to put weight back on in the past couple of weeks so they don't want to put him under for Xrays until he's put a bit more weight on in case the trauma stops him from eating again, but I said if it's left much longer he could stop eating because of whatever it is that's wrong with the leg. So they've given me that dose for another week, if he puts weight on his leg I'm to gradually reduce it and see if he get's better, if this dose doesn't work, or if it comes back after the dose is reduced it's xray time.

Like I say a loooong story, it's a what came first scenario, the urine infection, the leg problem or the gastric stasis. God knows what pet plan will think of the claim!

Good job you have Petplan :shock:
 
I've just come back from the vets a little miffed and yet puzzled by something one of the nurses said to me.

After seeing the vet and going to the pharmacy to pick up some Metacam, the nurse said "right ok so that's twice a day with a 4kg dosage. You'll need to make sure he eats before each dose" to which I replied "he's a rabbit", her reaction was "oh well then you probably can't always tell if they've eaten anything"....what the hell!

For starters yes I CAN tell if my rabbit has eaten, what kind of owner would I be if I didn't! And when I said "he's a rabbit" I meant, they're always eating...they graze! OMG!

Sorry rant over, but surely a vet nurse would know!

I think she probably meant unless your watching your rabbit all the time you may actually miss him eating, my doe is in a shed/aviary run surrounded with hay for example and when the vet asked me recently (during examination for stassis) when she'd last eaten it was actually quite difficult to say, i could tell him when i last saw her eat fresh food and her nightime fenugreek crunchie but, she could have happily been munching her hay while I was in bed, I think that's what she may have thought.

Also the metacam is quite a large dose for rabbits, you do need a 2ml or 1ml syringe but, as I remember on another thread recently going by the weight of the rabbit in kilo's wasn't that different a dose in ml's I think:?
 
I don't think that's that outrageous or indicates that she's ignorant and suspect it's exactly as Vicki says - because bunnies munch all the time it can be harder to tell exactly when they've last eaten unless you sit staring at them all day. So in a way it indicates that she does know bunnies because it sounds as if she knows they're supposed to be grazing on hay rather than having a big bowl of food plonked in front of them for you to see that the food has disappeared.

4kg dose doesn't sound too high to me - is it cat or dog metacam? I have a vague recollection that the dog metacam gives a dose of 0.1mg per kg, so a 4kg dog dose would be the equivalent to 0.4mg of metacam. I believe latest research suggests that bunnies can have up to 0.6mg/kg daily so for an average sized bun, that sounds about right to me for twice daily administration.
 
I'm ok with the dose I now have a collection of 3 metacam syringes since Xmas! ;)

I know what you mean, but I've had buns for 10 years and no one has said that to me before.

Hey it's been an odd Friday! :lol:
 
Yeah, thats what I thought about with the hay. If you have big piles of hay it can actually be pretty hard to tell how much they're eating. Or if they're grazing grass outside. Thats why I put the same amount of hay every day, so I can tell, and I top up as necessary.
 
I don't think that's that outrageous or indicates that she's ignorant and suspect it's exactly as Vicki says - because bunnies munch all the time it can be harder to tell exactly when they've last eaten unless you sit staring at them all day. So in a way it indicates that she does know bunnies because it sounds as if she knows they're supposed to be grazing on hay rather than having a big bowl of food plonked in front of them for you to see that the food has disappeared.

4kg dose doesn't sound too high to me - is it cat or dog metacam? I have a vague recollection that the dog metacam gives a dose of 0.1mg per kg, so a 4kg dog dose would be the equivalent to 0.4mg of metacam. I believe latest research suggests that bunnies can have up to 0.6mg/kg daily so for an average sized bun, that sounds about right to me for twice daily administration.

Cat metacam. They've never given me dog and have always told me to use the syringe that comes with it. It's been the same for years. :D

I just think it depends which way you look at it. We all know they're supposed to have food to keep their digestion going so unless they're not eating for some reason they've always had something to eat. As opposed to say a cat who may have a meal once a day, so if they were on painkillers twice a day their food would need to be seperated into two servings. Like I say it can be looked at both ways, she probably just didn't get on my good side when querying my insurance and trying to get me to pay some more excess when it says on the file I've paid it and they have my insurance claim form.
 
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