Thanks Sooz and Ben's mum, I really appreciate your posts. Last night was probably the worst night I've ever had with the rabbits
We really suffered with the floods on Monday and we had Navy helicopters over our house most of Monday night, so with that noise and the weather I brought the rabbits in for the night. They seemed quite settled once inside and they ate their breakfast with their normal gusto yesterday morning. I usually give them veg in the morning (a leaf of spring greens, plus a cherry tomato cut into two, two slices of cucumber and two inch long pieces of celery and some celery leaves), then fresh hay to munch all day. When I got home though, Frankie just didn't look 'right'. He took a raspberry leaf (something he loves) when it was offered to him but refused a second and just sat huddled up, so I decided to take him straight to the vets. They looked at him, heard some gurgling noises in his tummy and gave him metacam, a gut stimulant and baytril. I brought him home, kept them both in and finally at about 9pm he started to eat. After that he ate everything offered including hay and started to poo.
The vet said yesterday to bring him back in this morning so I did, and they were pleased with his progress. However when I started to leave the vet said he was going to give a lecture now and then went on to say that if I continued to feed them 'treats' like vegetables then they would get GI again :shock: He feels that rabbits should only have hay and pellets (mostly hay) and that veggies are just treat foods. I couldn't get a word in edge-ways and I felt that he had really misjudged how I care for my animals.. Frankie and Jen have a diet that is at least 80% hay and they are both excellent hay eaters. I don't know what set off Frankie's statis (stress from the floods and the surrounding panic?) and to be told that I had caused it by feeding them an 'unnatural diet' really upset me. I was actually crying in the vets
TBH, I've offered fretted that I don't give mine enough veg when I see some of the photos of bunnies with their veg on here, but now it seems that it should be none at all :? I don't feed cabbage (just spring greens) and limit broccoli. My vet is usually very good with the rabbits (he certainly knows his stuff) but the no-veg thing is totally new to me
I just wish he'd taken the time to find out what I knew about rabbits and what diet they currently have rather than just lecturing me.
Does anyone else feed no veg at all? He also suggested that grass was fine, but when I said that we didn't have any grass that I could use for a regular daily supply he said 'well, a run would be nice for them'. I do have a run (it's nearly 8ft!) but it's on concrete. Again, just an assumption that I thought was unfair
It was a nightmare night: I set my phone to go off every hour to check on Frankie and Jen so I was knackered from that, plus it was all by torchlight because we hadn't had electricity since 2pm on Monday! Then the power finally came back at 11pm and our burglar alarm went mental and wouldn't stop: the battery had died and it had reset and as we have only been here for a year and don't use it, we didn't know the default code :shock: Eventually we stumbled across it by chance but by then I was almost sobbing with exhaustion and worry
What a week
I can only assume that the vet was short with me because he lives locally and suffered the same...