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Helping Alice to regain weight

nicki

Warren Scout
My beautiful bun Alice has been through a lot. She survived major gastric surgery in the summer where it was discovered she had a thickening of the stomach lining causing pain and slowing down the gastro intestinal tract. This op followed repeated episodes of GI stasis and she was going to be put to sleep. She has had a couple of courses of steroids as a last resort and two months on she is doing well all things considered. Her quality of life has improved and she is in less pain, happy and active but she is losing weight. She needs metaclopramide, ranatidine at times.

I'm not sure whether to increase her intake of pellets to help her gain some weight. I normally try to keep her diet to limited pellets + lots of different hays, fresh herbs etc. Any suggestions to help my lovely girl.

Thanks
 
Hi,

I wish i could offer you some more advice than this as I unfortunately am in a very similar situation with my bunny Charlie who underwent surgery in April for a tumour and now has EC and is anaemic. She weighs only 1.7kg and i desperately need her to regain some weight too :(

All i can tell you is that you can feed her plain oats obviously only a small amount at first, and I don't think it will harm her to increase her pellets as apparently if they loose too much weight and they get past a certain point they cannot regain it and eventually shut down. So i would say it would be best to increase the pellets a little at a time and risk a runny tummy than to let her lose any more weight.

You can also try getting some oxbow critical care to give her a bit of a boost.

Can i ask what metaclopramide & ranatidine are as i havent heard of them and wonder if they could help my bun?

Good luck!

K
 
Metaclopramide and ranatidine

Hi
Thanks for your reply
Both of these medicines are to stimulate the gut and they are used either on their own or sometimes together alongside pain relief and fluids to treat GI stasis.
Alice is actually eating a lot most of the time but is still losing weight.
Nicki
 
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