High calcium levels; diet and the future

Hi all,

I'm officialy new to the forum but have been scouting around as a non-member for months now, have found it very useful also great to know I'm not the only neurotic bun-mum out there!

I'm posting as I have a girly bun called Lola who has been into the vets for excessive drinking, and today results have come back that she has moderately high calcium levels. The vet has suggested the best way forward is to get her on a low calcium diet and this should bring the levels down. She is currently on Excel Adult (39% fibre, 13% protein and 0.9% calcium), and he is suggesting the vetcare plus diet for urinary tract health (28% fibre, 14% protein and 0.5% calcium). Whilst I am happy to move her onto this, I've noticed the Excel Mature has nearly as low calcium (0.6%) but keeps a higher fiber level (38%). Any thoughts on the suitability of this for a 2 year old (ish - she is a rescue) bun? She and her male buddy also have unlimited access to hay (baled bought from a horsey friend so I assume it's what would be considered meadow hay) and get veggies every day - though from reading some other posts will have to wean her off the high calcium kale which she adores

In terms of the future... in your experience do buns with high calcium/some urine sludge tend to end up with kidney problems? This is a great fear of mine as my 2 prefer to drink from a bowl and are always knocking it about as they play and run around so it's hard for me to monitor their water intake. All other values in her blood test (creatinine, urea etc) were normal, but the vet did mention that kidney disease cannot be noted by their machine until 50-70% of kidney function is lost (which seems ridiculous to me!)

Apologies for the long first post!

Holly

For a truly low calcium diet you are better to cut pellets out altogether (if the rabbit doesn't have any problems maintaining weight) as dry pellet food is a lot higher in calcium than even high calcium veg. If you do this then you wouldn't need to cut the kale out altogether as that would be far better to feed than the pellets.

I have a rabbit with one kidney (other removed due to kidney stones) and he has an ongoing problem with bladder sludge which is carefully managed. He doesn't get pellets as such but I have a box of the Vetcare urinary tract that I uses as occasional treats. Burgess pellets are really only about 19% fibre I think, they give two figures and it's misleading. I *think* the Vetcare one is actually higher in fibre.

One important factor with low calcium diet is make sure they drink a lot of water/have veg for the moisture content rather than dried food.

sashababe said:

In terms of the future... in your experience do buns with high calcium/some urine sludge tend to end up with kidney problems?

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In theory, no, not according to my vet anyway. My rabbit is exceptional as the first rabbit she has treated with both bladder sludge and kidney stones (though other kidney problems I can't comment on). The vet in question is one of the country's top rabbit vets (FHB) so she has seen a lot of rabbits! Rabbits have a propensity to both problems but there isn't necessary a link between them being predisposed to both.


:wave: Welcome to the forum

I have a recommended diet sheet somewhere I will try to find .....

My 7 month old dwarf lop Buster now has a low calcium diet. A few months ago he started drinking and peeing a lot, aswell as dribbling urine everywhere. His urine was heavily sedimented with calcium carbonate crystals and he also had a urine infection. Fortunately he didn't seem to have any sludge or stones on the xrays. We still haven't got to the bottom of his problems but he's had a few different treatments now and seems to be much improved.

His urine is no longer "bitty" since having a low calcium diet. He has the Supreme Vetcare Urinary Tract Formula twice daily, usually about 30g altogether. At his last vets appointment he'd lost weight so he now has a bit more to try and boost his weight. He also has about half a bowl of low calcium veggies each afternoon, usually celery and cucumber. As he suffers with gas I have to limit some veggies but usually add in dill and mint for his digestion. He sometimes has small amounts of Brussels sprouts, apple, pepper and carrot but these are more of a treat. I have recently bought some forage from the Galens Garden website and he seems to love chewing bark off twigs and absolutely loves leaves.

He goes absolutely mad for the Vetcare pellets and they are easy to add medications to which I can then hand feed him. I would love to say I'd cut out pellets altogether but I'm not sure I could afford it as I also have another bun.

There is a really good webinar on the supreme website which someone recommended I watch when Buster first got ill. It's about an hour long but very informative about rabbits with urinary problems, particularly sludge/high calcium/stones. If you read more around the subject there is also a lot of debate about low calcium diets in rabbits as it seems some are predisposed to metabolic problems which mean they always have high blood calcium levels. This leads to high levels of calcium excreted in the urine. Keeping your bunny moving with lots of exercise and keeping her hydrated can help. Having seen such improvement in Buster I will certainly be keeping him on a low calcium diet from now on.

Good luck, hope your bun is feeling better soon x

Sorry, that was really long!!!x

sammywoo said:

My 7 month old dwarf lop Buster now has a low calcium diet. A few months ago he started drinking and peeing a lot, aswell as dribbling urine everywhere. His urine was heavily sedimented with calcium carbonate crystals and he also had a urine infection. Fortunately he didn't seem to have any sludge or stones on the xrays. We still haven't got to the bottom of his problems but he's had a few different treatments now and seems to be much improved.

His urine is no longer "bitty" since having a low calcium diet. He has the Supreme Vetcare Urinary Tract Formula twice daily, usually about 30g altogether. At his last vets appointment he'd lost weight so he now has a bit more to try and boost his weight. He also has about half a bowl of low calcium veggies each afternoon, usually celery and cucumber. As he suffers with gas I have to limit some veggies but usually add in dill and mint for his digestion. He sometimes has small amounts of Brussels sprouts, apple, pepper and carrot but these are more of a treat. I have recently bought some forage from the Galens Garden website and he seems to love chewing bark off twigs and absolutely loves leaves.

He goes absolutely mad for the Vetcare pellets and they are easy to add medications to which I can then hand feed him. I would love to say I'd cut out pellets altogether but I'm not sure I could afford it as I also have another bun.

There is a really good webinar on the supreme website which someone recommended I watch when Buster first got ill. It's about an hour long but very informative about rabbits with urinary problems, particularly sludge/high calcium/stones. If you read more around the subject there is also a lot of debate about low calcium diets in rabbits as it seems some are predisposed to metabolic problems which mean they always have high blood calcium levels. This leads to high levels of calcium excreted in the urine. Keeping your bunny moving with lots of exercise and keeping her hydrated can help. Having seen such improvement in Buster I will certainly be keeping him on a low calcium diet from now on.

Good luck, hope your bun is feeling better soon x

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Just to say there is an increasing amount of information on this which suggests that some bunnies with bladder sludge do not respond to calcium low diets and that these may cause problems in the long term as they do not get enough calcium to balance what they are excreting. Our Teasal was one of the buns who had a metabolic issue that caused bladder sludge even when he was on a pellet free no calcium forage diet. In the end we returned him to a normal diet (pellets and wild foods).

We used the Urinary Tract formula science selective for Kenco but we added just a small amount of them to his Allen & Page because I think when I looked in to A&P it had a similar amount of calcium in it. I would have loved to reduce his pellets right down but unfortunately it was always a struggle to keep enough weight on him. Its always a difficult balance.

I'd recommend getting one of those deep dog bowls for your bun to drink from, that way there is always plenty of water available (important in the summer) and they don't tend to get spilled. We have one of these Muesli as well, as he used to enjoy tipping the water everywhere! :roll::lol:

Here is a link to the page for the information about the urinary tract webinar on the Supreme website, recommend watching it definitely as Sammywoo says. http://www.supremepetfoods.com/zones/vet-zone/ Only it looks like you have to register now? And may only be available to veterinary health care professionals? Not sure, but worth emailing them as its very informative.

The two excel ones have the same crude fibre, that 38% value is something different they can 'beneficial fibre' so that's 38% of the 19% crude fibre. Basically just ignore that value and look at the crude which is what everyone else quotes.

If you want higher fibre and low calcium, you could try the Supreme Science Mature, which is 22% fibre, .6% calcium or Supreme VetCarePlus Urinary Tract Health Formula which is 25% fibre and .3-.6% calcium. Both have low calcium but within the minimum rec which I think is .5% and the phosphorous to calcium ratio is ok too.

Thanks so much for all the replies, I will take a good look at the websites etc recommended. Thanks too for the info on the crude vs total fibre, I wasn't sure if the quoted value would be one or the other if there's only one percentage given. I will invest in a deep dog dish, little madam likes to leap madly off things and knock whatever's around over so maybe a ceramic dish will stand up better to her assaults!! As you may guess the keeping her active part she does very well by herself :lol:

The only other thing I forgot to say in my intial post was that her calcium levels were 'high' but the vet seemed a little confused. Unfortunately I can't remember the units but he said their machines 'normal' range for calcium is 1.something to 3, and Lola was 3.2. However he then said their latest manual on rabbits suggests a top end of normal being 3.9 (in which case she wouldn't have excessively high calcium I'm assuming) so I'm not sure how 'high' hers actually is. I mention this as one of your posts talked about the importance of not giving too little calcium either - what would everyones views be? He doesn't seem the world most rabbit savvy vet so wouldn't want to put her on the low calcium diet and cause her harm because he isn't sure of his facts!