3 bad health checks - advice re: weight loss/claw loss needed!

[tlcwrites]

Elphie is missing one of her hind claws after the big fight with Athena over a satsuma yesterday.

Galinda is overweight.

Athena has a strange lump from where she was spayed and is now on baytril. I had been keeping an eye on it, but it had been cleared as being ok by the vet who spayed her. My local vets, the one she'll be a regular at, is unhappy though and I feel awful for not taking her sooner.

---

Okay, so I've slept on it (well not really, I slept terribly) and I still feel awful about how the health checks went. I still feel like a bad bunny mama and that I should have seen the signs and all of that. Still, I can't change the past but I can change the future.

Re: Elphie (and Athena): the vet nurse said to keep the war wounds from their fight clean with tepid slightly salted water and I've been doing that. However, I have to ask: how do I keep an eye out for a nail bed infection? The vet nurse said that it is a possibility and I want to make sure I know what I'm looking at. Or is it blindingly obvious? A sudden reaction to pain/starting to limp/something like that?

Re: Athena: any advice on giving baytril? She HATES it with a passion. I'm glad I only have to do it once a day. Between having to give Zara (cat) her epilepsy pill and Athena the baytril, I'm getting a lovely collection of scratch marks. :roll:

Re: Galinda: I've been told 3x veg in the morning, half an egg cup of pellets at night. Does veg include forage materials like cow parsley, plantain, bramble etc? Is hay still unlimited? Does picked grasses come under hay or veg? Where does dried forage come in? I think half her problem is that she's always been the laziest rabbit I've ever had. The vet said that should change when I get her partner, but I'm still not 100% sure when exactly that'll happen. She continually begs for food and that leads to people overfeeding her when I'm not well enough to feed.

Thanks in advance.

 

[mini lop1]

try not to blame yourself you where told by a vet that speyed her that is was ok, so it wasn't you fault, but at least now she has baytril from the vets you seen now

how much over weight is your bun, my bun is alittle overweight although vets have her down as ideal, but I know she should be little lighter but she doesn't feel overweight we call it all fluffs and muscle :lol:

 

[tlcwrites]

Thanks. Athena is going back next week after the baytril course to see if there's any change to the lump. We have no real idea about what it is.

Galinda's overweight by ~400g right now.

 

[Hele]

Aww don't feel bad, it's hard to find injuries on little furry creatures, there is no reason why you should have known that a lump you queried and were told by a vet was normal wasn't normal and 400g isn't the end of the world!

Hay must always be unlimited but if you feed alfalfa hay in any way I'd switch to a different hay! I would also include forage as veggies although they are likely to be more slimming than human veggies which is good.

I am now humming 'unlimited' after seeing their names and then typing that word :lol:

 

[tlcwrites]

I think it was just the hit of three things - something with each of them - at once! I knew about Elphie's injuries prior to actually going, but the lump and the overweightness really hit me hard and made me doubt myself.

They all generally get horse-quality dust extracted hay from a local equestrian shop, although this week they are having to make do with Tesco's everyday as we ran out and won't be able to get to the equestrian shop before closing until next Wednesday. They also occasionally get the Burgess Herbage/Forage hay via the HPC, I should have got that yesterday but was given two bags of food instead. I'm not going to need more pellets for a long while! Thanks for the consideration on forage - I was suspecting the same thing anyway, and I'm also starting to put more emphasis on forage as opposed to "traditional" veg anyhow. The vet nurse was very happy when I said what I was picking for them and her words were something along the lines of "Aww, lucky rabbits, they get to eat like wild rabbits!" Also attempting to get Galinda to work even harder for her food (I scatter fed anyhow) and she is really unimpressed. Lazy thing. This morning she was all like 'really? I have to actually look for it, instead of just running to the tastiest noms first?'

I've also just had a panic attack myself (unrelated to the bunnies) but now all I'm worried about is them even though I've been put on strict bed rest by my brother!

 

[MightyMax]

Oh my goodness you can't expect yourself to be aware of everything Only God does that, and he doesn't tell us :lol:

I agree with Hele's post .. There's not much weight to lose, and forage I would say counts as 'light' vegetables, so more eating pleasure for less calories. Continue to free feed hay whatever else you do!

As for the nail bed, it's doubtful it will get infected. You'll see it looking a bit red (depending on the colour of your rabbit) and swollen. But even then it should settle down. Does she go out madly digging in earth?

You're doing fine - rabbits seriously hide their stuff as we know. You have to be Sherlock Holmes sometimes to make any sense of them :thumb:

 

[keletkezes]

Galinda'll get over it: Lopsy was incandescent when we stopped using a bowl XD He now BEGS for the treatball at back-down-the-magic-tunnel time (approx. 1hr after sunset), sometimes he even tries to go down the tunnel before we put it in... :roll: He 'loves' reaching: we hang most food from the top of his run so he has to reach for it, and he's very good at it. He'll find every way to make it easier for himself, but we do try and push him OH has been trained to feed him properly as necessary, but he still sometimes overfeeds forage IMO: today Lopsy's got two 3' full twigs of hawthorn and a 2' rose twig :roll:

 

[tlcwrites]

Hay's definitely still unlimited for all of them. This morning was just forage for them today too. Galinda already seems to be over the "I have to work for it?" phase when it comes to veg now - I hung a lot of it off the top of the run this morning. Of course, she did try to make things easier at times, but even then, she's still working for it. Last night, she was less impressed with pellets meanwhile - she has a treat ball but it needs cleaning badly (she'd buried it in shavings - they are coming off those now). But, I bought her a hamster soft wood toy yesterday, stuffed it full of hay and hid the pellets in it. She was getting very frustrated trying to get them out of it - lots of angry paws scratching desperately to try and free the pellets!

Thanks for the advice on Elphie's nail. She isn't much of a digger at all. She prefers running circles around her run.

Also keletkezes - woah, lucky Lopsy! From his perspective anyway!

Now, just to worry about Athena, the lump and getting Baytril in her. It took all three of us last night to get her to take it. And of course, she hates me the most right now.

 

[helennnnnn]

How are you giving the Baytril at the moment? I found that a bit of mashed up banana with the abx mixed in goes down much better.

 

[tlcwrites]

We were given a syringe and recommended to make her into a bunnitto and then dribble it into the side of her mouth using a syringe. It's a bit of a nightmare. I'll give the banana a try as Athena ADORES banana (it's her favourite thing ever; she goes nuts over it!) Thank you! If only it was as pleasant tasting in their opinion as metacam. When Galinda was spayed, she kept trying to steal the syringe in order to get more.