Please Note - Medical Advice
Please keep in mind that posts on this forum are from members of the public sharing personal opinions. It is not a replacement for qualified medical advice from a veterinarian. Many illnesses share similar symptoms but require different treatments. A medical exam is necessary for an accurate diagnosis, without which appropriate treatment cannot be given.
You should always consult your vet before following any suggestions for medication or treatment you have read about. The wrong treatment could make your rabbit worse or mean your vet is unable to give the correct treatment because of drug interactions. Even non prescription drugs can do harm if given inappropriately.
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Urgent Medical Advice: If you need, or think you might need, urgent medical advice you should contact a vet. If it is out of working hours phone your vet's normal number and there should be an answer phone message with instructions on what to do.
Thank you all lots and lots and lots.
I can't believe how lucky I am to work from home, having my rabbits constantly "under my feet" and therefore noticing every change in them.
And to have the advice of this forum. I have an anxiety disorder. If one of my children coughs once I think it's cancer ... Therefore nobody takes me serious when I think, somebody is sick. So if I hadn't read so much on here I would probably have thought I am just hysterical as usual.
But thank God we were at the vets' early enough to be in with a good chance. The vet was satisfied with Onana whose belly feels much better. "He is not out of the woods yet, but has improved a lot." I need to make sure he keeps nibbling his hay, if not I should go back to syringe feeding and also give him fresh pineapple juice with his water. He got another injection for his guts and painkiller, but not the one that knocked him out so much. Now we must see how it goes, and if he keeps improving I only have to bring him back tomorrow morning.
And I forgot to say: He did a little pile of poo. On the small side but otherwise normal.
If he knew how much I love him he would be scared.
Yes! It is Baytril, and I am very relieved that I am not the only one who had problems administering that. The banana-trick I had tried because I was given that advice here after the neutering when Onana didn't want to take his painkiller. It worked fine back then but it didn't work with the Baytril. I hope my son who soon comes home has more success. He seems to be a bit of a rabbit whisperer. On the positive side Onana seems almost back to normal, has eaten lots of hay, coriander, mint, basil and fennel.
I am not back to normal, to be honest. I had just started to feel confident with my feeding and now I am totally insecure again. Even though everybody at the vets tells me NOT to guess what caused it, I can't stop myself. As a result I have stopped to feed Onana and Lukaku the herbs and grasses I picked every day for them from the wild part of my garden and only give them those, which I grow in protected raised beds. I still give them the hay from the Timothy company of course, which Onana loves, and vegetables that I get via subscription from an organic farm. But I have radically reduced the variety. Black cabbage, pointed cabbage, kale - it all scares me now. Until two days ago, my two rabbits had at least 15 different herbs and leafy vegetables to choose from every day. By now they have no more than half of it. And winter is coming. So there might be soon even less variety.
Am I doing the right thing by being more cautious? Or should I just continue to give them as many fresh food variety as I can possibly find?
Also they do live in my office. And while I have packed away all wires, I haven't bothered protecting the wooden shelving and books. I'm a writer, so I get lots of copies of my own books and I just stuffed them all into the bottom shelves and found it quiet funny how Lukaku and Onana nibbled them. Now I wonder: Did that cause Onana's stasis?
I want to care for them better, give them the best life possible. But if I would put fences up I would limit their space even more - and since the bonding wasn't going too well they anyway have only half the room each, which is not as much as I wanted.
I feel a bit at a loss at the moment and grateful for your advice and experience once again. Are there any rules you followed to avoid your rabbits going into stasis again? Or did you just continue as before and concentrated more on them leading a happy and interesting rabbit life?
I had also ordered a digging box from manorpetshousing and now I worry about what digging material to put in it - what is safe, what won't cause stasis?
My lovely vet nurse said: "Rabbits are so complicated, people should have a licence to keep them."
I definitely haven't got that licence. But I want my rabbits to have a great long life!
your vet nurse sounds very knowledgeable regarding rabbits and i agree they are very complicated.
my way of thinking is just to give them the best and most natural life possible while they are with me.
regarding stasis & diet (and having observed my rabbits that are free-range) i believe they need PLENTY of roughage. my buns eat all sorts of things by choice that i wouldn't have dreamed they would like eg not just tree leaves (mainly apple), but they munch the dried leaves probably more than fresh ones!
i wouldn't beat yourself up about Onana getting ill - rabbits seem to get ill for no apparent reason at all. imo they are one of the worst animals to have as pets! if they are vaccinated (mixy, RHD1 & RHD2) and have a decent diet you are 1/2 way there.
apart from that, i think it is a good idea to get females neutered to avoid cancer & if they are prone to dirty bottoms keep them ultra clean to avoid fly-strike.
blocked tear ducts can also be an issue.
you did the best thing possible for Onaka by getting to a vet as soon as you suspected something was not quite right
Thanks a lot.
I am relieved to hear that this confidence problem after illness is common among rabbit owners (I really don't like the word owner. It's rather as if they own me ...).
I will bring back the blackberry leaves to their menu today. And then probably start re-introducing the wild herbs one day at the time. We have wonderful wild marjoram, which Lukaku and Onana loved. I wondered if I gave them too much of it and didn't feed it anymore, but maybe that's really exaggerated.
The rabbit welfare-page I will look at - thank you!
I also wonder how to go about our re-bonding, which we have interrupted due to Onana's illness. Should we start it again this weekend? Or give Onana more time?
Our vet's nurse is really great, I am so grateful for her loving rabbits so much. She volunteered at a rescue and did bonding there, she offered to come to our house and help. Maybe I will take her up on this. I just feel so nervous at the moment.
Have all a great weekend full of happy, healthy hoppers and thank you!