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Water drinking excessive?

PickleLily

New Kit
Hello,
New to the forum, and I guess like many I'm joining up now because I have a worry about one of my little ones.

We have a 14 month old lop/lionhead cross called Lily (though she looks like a slightly fluffier lop) and she drinks water from a bowl, often getting bits on her face and down her front. Not too much though, I wouldn't say it was a massive percentage of what water is consumed. I don't know though, very hard to gauge.

She usually drinks 200-250ml a day, though we had a spell a few months back where she drank 300-400ml for about a week. Anyway, this week she's back to drinking up to 400ml a day and I've started to become worried about it. We lost her brother a year ago with a liver infection and the only clue we had to that was the sheer amount of water he drank.

We took Lily into the rabbit-savvy vet this week for her yearly jabs and I mentioned my concerns that she was drinking twice as much as usual. He didn't seem overly worried at all, her weight is stable (1.7kg) and she eats, poos and runs around the same as any other healthy rabbit.

I just wanted to ask people with a lot of experience if I'm right in being worried or if the heartbreak of losing her brother has made me hyper-sensitive to this sort of thing?

Many thanks.
 
Last edited:
Hello again, addtional notes:

Lily's teeth are fine, the vet checked them out and they've always been good.
We give her a week dose of Panacur every few months to try and protect against EC. We lost a bun to that awful thing a couple of years ago.
Also, we're at the early stages of bonding Lily with another rabbit. They are currently living side-by-side and are yet to meet properly. He's been there nearly 3 weeks though. He also drinks a normal amount (~200ml) a day.

Could it be a behavioural thing, boredom or just force of habit? In among the days of 400ml there was one of 250ml the other day (the vet visit day).
 
A weeks Panacur isn't long enough for EC, it might be worth doing a longer course of 28 days, bleach clean on days 21 and 28.
 
Hi, thanks for the reply. Yeah, we used it as a background preventative as advised by our vet (and outlined on the Panacur packet itself). We've decided, as we're bonding Lily to another rabbit to give a complete 28 day course.

Lily's water consumption and urine production are still high, varying from 240ml-400ml this week, with a norm of approximately 300ml. As her weight is stable and everything else about her is normal our vet insists there is really nothing to worry about. But, because I'm paranoid about it and over-sensitive to these things I still worry. Sigh.
 
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