Gut motility issues but underweight too - help!

Hi! :wave:

We have a wee lop Mini who is recovering from a bad bladder infection so is underweight at the moment. The vets have been encouraging us to feed her anything and everything to keep her eating after a couple of bouts of tummy trouble and get her weight back up. She's somewhere around the 1.8kg mark just now and should be 2kg.

She eats PaH pellets - probably too much right now around 1/4cup across the day but maybe more (we have been taking the some food is better than no food approach!)
Plenty of fresh wet leafy veg - maybe 2 or 3 cups a day
Meadow hay - her hay consumption is a little bit below what I'd like it to be
A nightly dish of Emeraid Herbivore

She had a bout of stasis in Jan and just seems to have a v sensitive tum. When she started penicillin injections, she had to be hospitalised for 2 weeks to get her eating/pooping again. And this weekend we withdrew zantac and emeprid after several weeks as the infection has cleared and she seemed to be fine but she quickly slowed down on her eating and her poops got really tiny, non-existent for a while on Sunday, so I had to start her on the zantac and emeprid again

Our vets is closed today, but I plan to talk to them tomorrow about the best course of action for getting her off the gut stimulants successfully. But I do think that changes to her diet might help give her a healthier gut generally so she doesn't need as much help from the meds. We've just been chucking anything she'll eat at her the last few weeks.

Her boyfriend Jay is starting to get a little chunky from nicking her food all the time too!

I'm considering reducing her pellet intake and maybe trying Fibafirst, and will mention that to the vet tomorrow. I've also given them some Burgess Dandelion & Marigold hay with their usual stuff to encourage them to eat more hay.

Does anyone have any ideas about high fibre foods that will aid good digestion and maybe help keep her weight up?

Has she had her teeth checked recently ? As she has had a poor hay intake for some time it may be that she has now developed some tooth problems. So the gut slow down would be unlikely to fully resolve due to a poor hay consumption

You may need to feed the Rabbits separately to make sure that Mini is getting a fare share. I would not suggest trying to bulk her up with high carbohydrate feeds as that would probably exacerbate her gut problem. Fibafirst is a good food to try her on.

She's been at the vets at least once a week for the last few weeks and they tend to check her teeth most times, so I think they're ok. I'll ask them to check next time we go though. She does eat a fair bit of hay, but probably not 80% of her diet as advised.

I think it's more likely the underlying problems she has with her bladder that are causing the gut slow down - her bladder sits in the wrong position so it is rubbed by her pelvis, irritating it and making it prone to infection. The vet hopes to keep her stable on medication - metacam and cystease but we've just cleared the infection so at the beginning of that maintenance process really. I'll ask the vets about other options e.g. changing her metacam dose if her bladder is still uncomfortable, but in the meantime I think improvements in her diet might help too.

We sometimes use a spare cage or hand feed her to make sure she's getting plenty. It's more what we're feeding her that's the problem I think, it's too easy to give her a wee handful of extra pellets! Fibafirst definitely sounds like it could be a good option.

Do you have access to some forage? It seems to be incredibly gentle on bunny tummies and is a great source of really tough fibre because it hasn't been 'engineered' to be rich and soft like our home grown or supermarket vegetables. I have a bunch of 6 week old baby bunnies here, two of whom had no solid poos at all when they arrived last week, just splats. I have been feeding them on a mixture of fresh hawthorn, bramble, willow, apple leaves and raspberry leaves, and they are totally thriving on it. They've been putting on weight nicely and their poos have firmed up and are now looking great. Because it's so gentle on guts, they are able to tuck into a good lot of it alongside their hay and so it is good for their guts and weight. I'm not sure if willow is a good idea for a bun who is already on metacam, I think it would probably be ok as most of the painkilling ingredient is supposed to be in the bark, but I wouldn't feed it without checking with someone in the know, first.

I do hope you manage to get something sorted for your little one xx

Thanks Santa, that's a good idea. I live in a flat in Glasgow so not sure where I could get forage from, but apple leaves & twigs have been suggested to me before. Might ask my mum to bring some up from her garden and investigate where I could forage for some nearby away from all the polluted roads! We do pull grass for them down near the canal next to us which seems to go down a treat. I wonder if I could grow a couple of trees on my balcony in pots...