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My E.Cuniculi bun's mysterious symptoms - any ideas?

ginge1

Young Bun
Hi everyone:wave:,

My lil' Digby is a bit of enigma to me & all the vets I have seen.
He is an approx. 8 (he came from a rescue) neutered mini lop. He is a free range house bun & I work from home so can keep a close eye on him. He came to us with damage caused by E.Cunculi - slight head tilt, facial slumping to one side of his face, back leg weakness, & trouble judging distances & focusing on objects.

Over the years he has developed more related health problems & it is now a balancing act to keep him stable & comfortable. He has had two dentals due to spurs in the last two years, so it's averaging out that every September/October he with start finding it difficult to eat his pellets & hard foods.
He went through a spate of having a sludgy bladder & developed a urine infection last year. Oral Baytril didn't work for him & it flared up again so I was given antibiotic injection for him which he responded to well & the infection cleared up. I give him Cystaid everyday to help support his bladder function, as well as fresh & dried plantain which seem to help prevent sludge.

The strangest symptoms he has are as follows. He will go through phases of being totally zoned out & will just walk into the middle of the room, sit there, rock back & forth, & do this thing with his mouth where he looks like he's chewing something, only he's not. It's not tooth purring or tooth grinding. This is accompanied by him going off his hay. It's not his teeth because he'll still eat readigrass & other dried herbs, fresh grass etc. We found the only way to prevent this regression was to give him Panacur everyday.

The trouble is he's had a bit of a time of it recently. He had fleas (which is still an ongoing battle), he lost Missy (his bunny wife) in April, he had his myxi vac two weeks ago, had to have his bum & tail shaved because he has urine dribble & he was getting uncomfortable & bathing the area was becoming a daily thing which stress him out, he got ear mites, & now he has fur mites.
In the last few weeks he has gone off his hay again. Then in the last couple of days he has stopped eating all hays/grasses, dried & fresh herbs, wild foods ie. plantain, & spinach. He is however still eating apple leaves, flat leaf parsley, some mint, rosemary, lavender, & going crazy for carrot, brocolli & pellets. He is also doing the chewing thing with his mouth, zoning out a lot & sleeping more & more, with a few sneezes here & there. He's still pretty fiesty, digging up his blanket, throwing his snugglesafe, cleaning himself & pooping fine.

He has fiberplex twice a day to help support his gut (especially now he's off his hay again), half a capsule of cystaid a day, & a dose of panacur a day. Due to his mites taking ages to get rid of & the fact they are causing him discomfort he is having metacam at the mo too.

Can anyone shed some light on what's going on with him?
 
Hi Jane:wave:
No he hasn't recently. After many many vets looking at him over the past years I've come to the conclusion his symptoms are in accordance with him having lesions on his nervous system due to the E.Cuniculi, which is becoming exacerbated due to his old age
Just done a little test with him with a smooth sow thistle - he ate the individual bud heads, but turned his nose up at the leaves, gave him a some lavender & he ate it all but left the stalk when he usually wolfs the lot. He's eating slower than normal & has a bit of a wet mouth so I think it must be dental time again! He's chasing me around the house & is his usual self in most other ways. Vets tomorrow morning - I will not be popular with his lordship!
 
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