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Stasis prone bunnies

ps Dill is also a great help with gas. The leaves aren't supposed to help but I find that they can. Dill seed is the active ingredient in gripe water & normalises gut contractions (stops painful contractions (colick). Infacol breaks up foam.
(The problem with gas in the gut is that it makes a foam of bubbles which can't be propelled forward. Maybe a combination of infacol & gripe water would be more effective than either alone???

Totally agree with you about the Dill leaves, they are effective, but I guess the seeds have a higher concentration of oil. I grind mine in a pestle and mortar. Gripe Water seems to comfort some unhappy rabbit tummies.
I don't use Infacol. I read a study ( albeit a small one) which showed that the sweetener( saccharin) it contains, causes a rise in blood glucose levels by altering gut bacteria. I've often wondered if sometimes rabbits have innacurate glucose readings by the time they are seen by a vet, because people will have perhaps given them several doses of Infacol at home?
I think the RWAF says it best....Although Infacol is unlikely to cause problems if used in rabbits, we do not feel it is useful. Rabbits can not burp, so although it may gather the gas together, it is still stuck!
I LOVE reading your stuff. IMO, observation is the key to healthy happy rabbits.
 
Thank you thumps! MM sent me your diet stasis thread and I have put a lot of that in motion. Toby is eating lots of twigs, black current leafs etc. He's pellet free now too!

Tobys stasis starting when he lost Millie. That has made me think about the hide wholes etc I'm going to have a look and see what I can do. Do you think tunnels would provide this too?

I have Infacol but read on the rwaf website it wasn't recommend so I've always been nervous of it. Thank you so much thumps!

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Tunnels are an excellent idea as long as they are quite wide, but I could manage by adapting the furniture a bit.
3 seater settee a few inches from the wall made a good run to the door (escape from the room!)
I nice very rabbit friendly hidey hole is simply a coffee table draped with a cloth down to the floor. The tunnel was my table protector rolled loosely - more a rabbit run to get from 1 hidey hole to another without being seen!!
What our rabbits see as safe can be far from safe in reality but they're adapting their environment to what wildies do.
 
Totally agree with you about the Dill leaves, they are effective, but I guess the seeds have a higher concentration of oil. I grind mine in a pestle and mortar. Gripe Water seems to comfort some unhappy rabbit tummies.
I don't use Infacol. I read a study ( albeit a small one) which showed that the sweetener( saccharin) it contains, causes a rise in blood glucose levels by altering gut bacteria. I've often wondered if sometimes rabbits have innacurate glucose readings by the time they are seen by a vet, because people will have perhaps given them several doses of Infacol at home?
I think the RWAF says it best....Although Infacol is unlikely to cause problems if used in rabbits, we do not feel it is useful. Rabbits can not burp, so although it may gather the gas together, it is still stuck!
I LOVE reading your stuff. IMO, observation is the key to healthy happy rabbits.

Those are interesting points Greengage. I think that the rise in blood sugar mainly applies to complete obstruction which may not be seen on plain XR & is a result of very severe pain. It is truely massive (levels over 16.0 are needed before the diagnosis of obstruction is supported. Lower levels especially just over the threshold are usually ignored = we've got a stressed out rabbit.
I come to some similar conclusions but for different reasons. Once froth is changed to a pocket of gas, the pocket can work it's way through the tiniest crack & doesn't need forward propulsion. (It's the froth which can't move & is holding thngs up.) It's not really a burping problem as when changed to gas it rushes down to the bottom end easily.
However as I see it, all depends on how high up in the gut the froth is. The infacol has to get to the right place & needs some gut motility to do so.
If the gas is in the caecum I don't think infacol can get there to do any good.

Us oldies started with no info at all!!! We divided stasis prone rabbits into "top end buns"who responded best to Maxolon when in stasis & "bottom end buns" who did best on Ranitidine. I would expect the "top end buns" to have the best chance of a response to Infacol.
All that being said I agree about the saccharine (no good for humans either!) Unfortunately all liquid meds primarily marketed for humans are heavily sweetened.

We're in a lot of agreement. I hope I'm not being contentious or "nit picking" You have raised some good points.

Perhaps it boils down to a personal decision. If it works for your rabbit & averts a very serious condition ..... RWA isn't strongly against it. I'd interpret the warning, more as not to be used as completely harmless but with the same degree of thought as any other meds.

Thank you for the great compliment. I'm continuing to learn all the time. I couldn't agree more about observation & learning the idiosynchracies of each rabbit.
TBH I'm almost completely taught by my rabbits.:lol: Why are they doing that ?- look for repeating patterns & try to make sense of it from their viewpoint.
 
Sorry for sounding silly but what is gripe water and how do we use it in for rabbits? Xx

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We just bought some jigsaw flooring from halfords, it has quite big coverage! Has Freddie always been a single bun or has he lost a partner?

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He’s been along since 10 weeks, we got him neutered and waited until he was ready to get a lady friend and then we adopted him a girlfriend from a rescue but then she needed to be spayed.

After the Infacol discussions I’m going to stop using it. I’ll see whether I can manage his gas without it. My husband is home after a week and he agrees that Freddie is not himself so going back on Monday. He’s had over 750ml of water today, I’ve been needing to fill his bowl more frequently so thought I ought to measure it. Is that an alarming amount? I’m used to him drinking about half a bowl a day and now I’m on his 4th bowl. He’s also done a large pee outside his litter box which is very out of character for him.

Z


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Sorry for sounding silly but what is gripe water and how do we use it in for rabbits? Xx

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Not silly at all. Bless you. It's rarely used for babies these days.
Gripe water is the very old fashioned way to treat babies with painful "wind"/ infantile colick, if they haven't been "burped" properly or take in too much air when they feed.
It's basically a tea made from dill seeds. We syringe feed it into rabbits like other liquid meds.

As I understand it, the gas in rabbit bloat has a different cause. Because the GI tract is moving slowly the food starts to ferment. (If you've ever used yeast, it's more like the froth we get when we activate dried yeast)

Please can someone help us with the dose for rabbits? (I'm having a senior moment!!)
 
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He’s been along since 10 weeks, we got him neutered and waited until he was ready to get a lady friend and then we adopted him a girlfriend from a rescue but then she needed to be spayed.

After the Infacol discussions I’m going to stop using it. I’ll see whether I can manage his gas without it. My husband is home after a week and he agrees that Freddie is not himself so going back on Monday. He’s had over 750ml of water today, I’ve been needing to fill his bowl more frequently so thought I ought to measure it. Is that an alarming amount? I’m used to him drinking about half a bowl a day and now I’m on his 4th bowl. He’s also done a large pee outside his litter box which is very out of character for him.

Z


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He seems to be drinking a lot! Can you get him to the Vet today?
 
He seems to be drinking a lot! Can you get him to the Vet today?

I agree with Tonibun that this is an abnormally high urine output. Even more so, as it is a change from normal & he isn't himself.
Another option for you is to phone the vet now. Start with the present problem & tell him/her absolutely everything from the 1st time he started to become ill. (Write it down to help you)
If you can syringe up some urine from the litter tray or even put wet litter in a polybag, they can do a quick "dip stix test".
On my mind is that it's Sunday & there'll be no routine transport to get blood tests to the lab. I don't know what facilities your vet has to do tests on site, so maybe he's the best one to decide.
 
:wave: Hi loobers25
(I agree that the patch on the neck looks like a reaction to immunisation or even another type of injection.)
1st Many of us know how incredibly stressful it is for the carer to have a stasis prone rabbit.

Have you looked at a sticky on RU diet? "Diet for stasis prone rabbits"? It will give you a range of totally different diagnoses helped by diet, & some idea of the preferred forage, which can change over time.
Sometimes it can take a very long time to understand why a rabbit is stasis prone even with care from top exotics vets, but the frequency & severity of stasis can be reduced.
The idea is to increase the fibre content of the diet to stimulate maximum GI motility, so the rabbit is more able to withstand minor dips in motility which would have previously caused stasis.
To add to the thread -
Donampt's Alvin - the rabbit with "attitude" was an incredibly gas prone rabbit. She noticed that just before stasis, he drank less water & could avert full stasis with a combination of diet & syringe feeding him water at the 1st sign he was deteriorating.The final diagnosis was that he was deaf!! Not so easy to detect, because rabbits can sense so much from vibration through the floor. Eventually realised when he did not respond to a very loud noise in the air & nothing hit the ground! (smaller "bitty poops" can sometimes be an indicator of dehydration.

Loss of a partner rabbit can make the survivor feel very insecure from predators depending on their basic temperament when a major sense is compromised - stress - but they may not appear to be nervous from our viewpoint.
It can be helped by giving them "rabbit runs" access behind furniture eg move the sofa away from the wall. Distance should be just greater than the span of his whiskers -(The way rabbits know they have a free run & won't get stuck)
They also like "hidey holes" a place where they can see/feel what is going on with multiple exits, from an enclosed place (material is good because they can "nose it up" to do a runner to the next space).
By & large rabbits feel vulnerable in an open space without plenty of protective company which can be us. They can hear the predatory "night life" - cats or urban foxes through locked double glazing!

Pretty Lupin's Nino was another bloat prone rabbit. Final diagnosis - congenital deformity of shoulders - painful - but there was no indication whatsoever of any problems hopping - he was highly mobile. It was detected by chance on X-R
The partner rabbit - Poppy - was another bloat rabbit with severe behaviour disorder which even defied Anne MacBride!! When Nino passed, (from heart attack - not bloat) Poppy stopped getting bloat - she was a rare rabbit who preferred no partner, but there were no indictions of poor bonding.

Both rabbits were on a pellet free diet - hay & forage, but the hay was meadow hay with a good range of different grasses & plants (Some farmers sell it in bags) i know several dysbiosis prone rabbits only controlled by a pellet free diet.
Outdoor rabbits definately don't need any pellets. There is difference of opinion about whether indoor rabbits can get sufficient vit D3 without exposure to direct sunlight. Vit D3 can be stored so a sunny patch through open windows in summer can provide enough exposureto UVB

Plenty of excercise - a good run round is also a great help for GI motility especially for bloat prone rabbits. It sounds tough on them, but can avert fully developed bloat.

My personal experience is that many stasis prone rabbits do indeed prefer forage which helps them. I could tell more about Thumper's GI state by what he chose to eat than waiting for the poop to appear! I have no idea of herbal medicine. I'd see what Thumper preferred - look up the medicinal properties of that plant & try to work it out. eg willow leaves & small twigs have NSAI in them - rabbit may be going for pain relief if willow leaves are preferred.

Small twigs won't gve any problems with blockage at all. ( a log may do so because of the dense fibrous layer under the bark)
Fresh forage is best because of the high water content. (Wild rabbits don't drink water relying on fresh plants, roots, & live twigs, perhaps dew, for all their requirements) When GI motility slows down (less through put) our rabbits will cut back on water in preference to fibre needed to maintain GI motility - hence Alvin's problem.
None of us can do all of this all the time. Even fresh foragers have to rely on dried forage to get through winter!!
We are very restricted in rented accommodation. We can only do our best.
i hope this essay gives you a few ideas to work on. Some not possible in your situation. Some won't help. But perhaps they open a few doors for you to adapt to your own situation.

ps Dill is also a great help with gas. The leaves aren't supposed to help but I find that they can. Dill seed is the active ingredient in gripe water & normalises gut contractions (stops painful contractions (colick). Infacol breaks up foam.
(The problem with gas in the gut is that it makes a foam of bubbles which can't be propelled forward. Maybe a combination of infacol & gripe water would be more effective than either alone???

Sorry, I’m new to the forum and just realised what you meant by the sticky, I thought it was a typo suggesting I stick it to the Diet forum, I didn’t meant to straddle 2 forums. I’ve found the forum now, thank you.


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Sorry, I’m new to the forum and just realised what you meant by the sticky, I thought it was a typo suggesting I stick it to the Diet forum, I didn’t meant to straddle 2 forums. I’ve found the forum now, thank you.


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Don't be sorry :) Navigating around a new forum can be confusing for a while.

More importantly how is Freddie today? I think I would certainly get a vet's opinion about his drinking as that does seem excesive and if he has a UTI brewing, it could explain his reluctance to eat.
 
Not silly at all. Bless you. It's rarely used for babies these days.
Gripe water is the very old fashioned way to treat babies with painful "wind"/ infantile colick, if they haven't been "burped" properly or take in too much air when they feed.
It's basically a tea made from dill seeds. We syringe feed it into rabbits like other liquid meds.

As I understand it, the gas in rabbit bloat has a different cause. Because the GI tract is moving slowly the food starts to ferment. (If you've ever used yeast, it's more like the froth we get when we activate dried yeast)

Please can someone help us with the dose for rabbits? (I'm having a senior moment!!)
Do you use gripe water along side Infacol? Xx

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I know of some people who have used both together a few mins apart.

I found an old video on You tube of 3-4 secs of a cotton tail rabbit running in slow motion. (Turn the sound off!!! start at 1:30.) I find the change in their shape as they run amazing, almost like a bellows action on the abdominal contents
If Baily has a lot of Rex in him & thin fur on his feet, you may have problems with flooring & a reason for him to stay on the bed. Most Rex rabbits wear down the fur on their feet very easily (few guard hairs) & need to be kept on a special soft deep surface to prevent hock sores (pressure sores on the heels). You may have to put down some olf double duvets for him to play on. (Eccentric maybe:oops: but cheaper than stable matting)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iic2IJovJ38
 
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Those are interesting points Greengage. I think that the rise in blood sugar mainly applies to complete obstruction which may not be seen on plain XR & is a result of very severe pain. It is truely massive (levels over 16.0 are needed before the diagnosis of obstruction is supported. Lower levels especially just over the threshold are usually ignored = we've got a stressed out rabbit.
I come to some similar conclusions but for different reasons. Once froth is changed to a pocket of gas, the pocket can work it's way through the tiniest crack & doesn't need forward propulsion. (It's the froth which can't move & is holding thngs up.) It's not really a burping problem as when changed to gas it rushes down to the bottom end easily.
However as I see it, all depends on how high up in the gut the froth is. The infacol has to get to the right place & needs some gut motility to do so.
If the gas is in the caecum I don't think infacol can get there to do any good.

Us oldies started with no info at all!!! We divided stasis prone rabbits into "top end buns"who responded best to Maxolon when in stasis & "bottom end buns" who did best on Ranitidine. I would expect the "top end buns" to have the best chance of a response to Infacol.
All that being said I agree about the saccharine (no good for humans either!) Unfortunately all liquid meds primarily marketed for humans are heavily sweetened.

We're in a lot of agreement. I hope I'm not being contentious or "nit picking" You have raised some good points.

Perhaps it boils down to a personal decision. If it works for your rabbit & averts a very serious condition ..... RWA isn't strongly against it. I'd interpret the warning, more as not to be used as completely harmless but with the same degree of thought as any other meds.

Thank you for the great compliment. I'm continuing to learn all the time. I couldn't agree more about observation & learning the idiosynchracies of each rabbit.
TBH I'm almost completely taught by my rabbits.:lol: Why are they doing that ?- look for repeating patterns & try to make sense of it from their viewpoint.


I agree - if it works, then continue to use it, as it could in some instances perhaps save a rabbit's life.

Frances Harcourt Brown, retired rabbit vet, was not strongly against it either, and was quite happy for people to use it whether it did any good or not.


Greengage - I would be very interested to see a link to the study where artificial sweeteners have been linked to a rise in blood glucose levels :)
 
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I agree - if it works, then continue to use it, as it could in some instances perhaps save a rabbit's life.

Frances Harcourt Brown, retired rabbit vet, was not strongly against it either, and was quite happy for people to use it whether it did any good or not.


Greengage - I would be very interested to see a link to the study where artificial sweeteners have been linked to a rise in blood glucose levels :)

Thank you MM I've looked up the metabolism of saccharine. It is a synthetic chemical not found in nature. At no point in its metabolism in man or rat is it converted to glucose or a substance similar to glucose.
Therefore IMO it cannot be responsible for any rise in glucose levels. (I have always associated this rise, with the effect of natural cortisol release by stress either physiological or pain.)

Several years ago it was said that any episode of stasis destabilised the intestinal micro organisms, irrespective of medication, for up to 6 weeks, but do not know the original source.

I would also like to see the study which links artificial sweeteners to blood glucose.
 
Thank you MM I've looked up the metabolism of saccharine. It is a synthetic chemical not found in nature. At no point in its metabolism in man or rat is it converted to glucose or a substance similar to glucose.
Therefore IMO it cannot be responsible for any rise in glucose levels. (I have always associated this rise, with the effect of natural cortisol release by stress either physiological or pain.)

Several years ago it was said that any episode of stasis destabilised the intestinal micro organisms, irrespective of medication, for up to 6 weeks, but do not know the original source.

I would also like to see the study which links artificial sweeteners to blood glucose.


Yes this is exactly what I thought and thank you for confirming it :)

Stress causes a rise in blood glucose levels, for sure. It often muddies the waters in some cases of stasis rabbits too!


Hopefully Greengage will come back to us with the study :)
 
Don't be sorry :) Navigating around a new forum can be confusing for a while.

More importantly how is Freddie today? I think I would certainly get a vet's opinion about his drinking as that does seem excesive and if he has a UTI brewing, it could explain his reluctance to eat.

Freddie is doing really well, he’s bouncing around like nothing has happened. He’s been to the vets today and it turns out they didn’t do his X-rays when he went in last time as they wanted the results from his blood tests to check he was safe to go under GA so now he is having his X-ray on Thursday. I’ll start a new thread when I get results. Thanks for your help folks!


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Thank you for these links JJ
I was aware of these possible effects of a long term high dose of saccharin in humans.
I would like to make the following points from the press & forum articles.
Saccharin is thought to
a) impact on glucose absorption from the diet.
b) associated with low insuklin levels
c) associated with low GPI
Other articles refer to a possible role in the developement of type 2 diabetes.

The point I would like to make is that the normal modern human diet has high levels of sucrose/ corn syrup = glucose + fructose which are seperated into the component parts by ptyalin in saliva. The fructose component has its own adverse effects. Artificial sweeteners are extensively used in "Diet" fizzy drinks & as an alternative for diabetics.
Rabbit diet is totally different & very low in sugars
Rabbits in stasis have either no food intake or a very low food intake.

Infacol is being given for a very short time, & in low dose.
There are 2 problems to explain in stasis rabbits.
a) How can saccharin be possibly absorbed from a slow GI tract in time to impact on the metabolic system in a complex way?
b) Why do rabbits in stasis who have had no drugs what so ever, routinely have blood glucose levels above the norm?

Humans with very painful conditions eg obstructed GI tract often have raised glucose levels which return to normal when the underlying condition is treated, & on subsequent Ix are not prediabetic. This is even more apparent in people with severe multiple injuries where blood glucose levels may even reach 20.00. In both cases the cause is activation of the cortisol system from physiological & pain stress.

Rabbit cortisol system activates far more readily than the human system, & can not only cause high blood glucose levels, but also cause severe slow down of the GI tract.
I think that we would agree that one of the commonest causes of stasis in rabbits is an underlying painful condition, & indeed we owe much to your work several years ago, advocating for pain relief in rabbits in stasis. This had a marked effect on improving recovery rates at the time.

I am grateful for the information but IMO it refers to a different situation from rabbits in stasis. The information does not show us the original research done, which is essential to appraise the conclusions.
Indeed all the paediatric meds I can think of, including ABx contain artificial sweeteners. I do not think that these would be considered suspect although given more frequently & for a longer period than infacol.

Bloat is a life threatening condition for rabbits & necessitates very rapid treatment indeed. Time to get to the vet has to be taken into consideration.
For all these reasons, I personally would not withold infacol in this situation.
(I once discussed using activated charcoal to absorb the gas for bloat with gastric distention with Marie Kubiac. She said that we couldn't get enough into the rabbit to work. That is the only alternative I know of for this situation)
 
Freddie is doing really well, he’s bouncing around like nothing has happened. He’s been to the vets today and it turns out they didn’t do his X-rays when he went in last time as they wanted the results from his blood tests to check he was safe to go under GA so now he is having his X-ray on Thursday. I’ll start a new thread when I get results. Thanks for your help folks!


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We been to the vets too today, hopefully an xray will give you some long awaited answers! Xx

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I was wondering if metacam has a artifical sweeter because of the sweet taste?

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