HELP: 6-7 week old bunny, beginnings of enteritis?

I was given a 6-7 week old female mixed breed bunny at Walmart the other day. It's a long story, but I'd rather get to the issue at hand. She's extremely thin. I feel like the first day she was here, she was eating me out of house and home. I thought maybe it's because she no longer had to compete with her three siblings. The eating has slowed down, though she's still eating relatively well. She has grown, but the bigger her body has gotten, the thinner she looks. I can feel every bone down her back and her pelvic bone.

Her poop looks good, but that has also slowed down some since the first day. Still not what I'd call alarmingly so. I haven't seen her eat her cecos once, nor have I seen her produce any. She's in a solid bottom cage, so I should see them if they were there. Also, on the first and second day, she had been grinding her teeth. I gave her baby gas drops, and the tooth grinding stopped.

She's on the food that the people said she had been on. It's from the bulk bin at the local feed store, but the brand is LabDiet. I haven't started weaning her over to the Purina rabbit pellets at all yet because I've been afraid to change anything. In addition to a small amount of pellets each day (less than 1/8 cup), she has access to unlimited 2nd cut timothy hay and water from a bottle. I've been contemplating putting a bowl in there just to make sure she's drinking enough.

So to recap, she's eating, drinking, and pooping relatively well. Stool looks formed and isn't soft, but I'm not seeing any cecos either. She's super thin. I'm worried about enteritis as I've seen these symptoms before in baby rabbits that ended up with enteritis and died. Is there anything else I can be doing, or am I just screwed?

Does her belly seem bloated at all? Is her fecal poop looking smaller than usual? Is she showing signs of having digestive upset still? Have you checked to make sure she is eating the hay really well?

You will need to ensure she is getting enough water. A rabbit won't eat well without good hydration(and thus won't put on weight). I would try offering her a water dish and watching to make sure she is drinking from it.

If she is eating well and getting sufficient amounts but still not gaining weight, it's possible she has a parasite. It would probably be a good idea to take a fresh fecal sample into your vets to get tested.

There shouldn't be any reason for you to be seeing cecotropes if she is reingesting them like she should.

Her belly does feel bloated. I did give her a water dish and she is drinking from it. Her poop is the same size now as it was the day I got her. She's tiny, so it's tiny. I don't have a comparison point to base it off of because she's so much smaller than my others. She is eating, hay and pellets, but like I said, it's less than what she ate the first day. As far as digestive upset, as I said, after the first couple of days, the teeth grinding stopped. She's not hunched over. She was actually doing binkies on my bed tonight.

A pot belly along with a thin and very poor body condition, is indicative of a health problem. It could be from coccidia or another parasite like pinworms. If you are certain she has a pot belly, she does need to be checked by a vet. If she is acting normally and eating well, you may be able to just bring in a fecal sample for testing. But if she is acting unwell at all, you should definitely take her in as well. You want to get the fecal sample tested right away, as this can potentially be a life threatening problem.

She may not be putting on weight because she really needs more pellets or higher protein foods, as she is a growing bunny. However, if she is having digestive or parasite problems, increasing pellets probably isn't the best thing yet, as this can sometimes worsen digestive issues.

From what your describimg. it could be several things, as Jbun suggested. I would definitely take a fresh fecal sample to a vet to check for worms as soon as you can. Worms can kill a rabbit if they get overloaded with them. Once you eliminate the possibility of worms or coccidia, then it's possible the bunny was born with a faulty digestive system so that even though they're eating, the nutrients aren't being absorbed by the body. The few we've seen had a nice little belly on them but they were skinny everywhere else...and they eventually died. Hopefully, you can find out what's going on soon. Just to add, I don't think that 1/8 cup of pellets is enough for one that young.

if you get jelly poos... that's coccidia.

if she's thin and pooping fine... probably worms.

They are treated differently.

Worms... panacur
Coccidia...Sul-met.

if she's eating and drinking well.. not enteropathic illness

Feed her more. Give her all the pellets she wants. Hay bulks up, doesn't provide the solid well balanced nutrition that she needs.

Update: Yesterday morning Nova wasn't eating or drinking. Her poops were extremely small and hard/dry. I had to go to work and the whole day I was worried about her. Mom stopped at the vet and got critical care. I got fluids from another vet. I also stopped and got alfalfa hay. I put the alfalfa hay in there and started giving her alfalfa pellets. Within 3 hours, I had a handful of poop. This morning there were half-eaten cecos. She's gained 5 grams since yesterday and is now popcorning on my bed. I've raised babies before, but always with their mom. I didn't remember to give her alfalfa hay, so essentially I was depriving her body of the nutrition it needed. I feel like the biggest jerk ever. At least we seem to be on track now. Oh, btw, no parasites.

That's good to know. You don't want to overdo the alfalfa though. With the alfalfa pellets you can give her grass hay, or you could still mix a little alfalfa with some Timothy. I'm glad she's on track and gaining weight!

Does anyone know how my sweet little bunny died? My sweet 8 month old lion head rabbit died last night unexpectedly and I don’t know how. She was perfectly healthy and she was doing binkys and hopping around yesterday. She was getting skinny but When i tried feeding her more it didn’t help. I just moved rooms and before her cage was in the middle of the room. Then I moved her into a small closet in the dark. But I didnt think it would kill her or anything. She was getting enough air I left the door open. She had plenty of water and food left. When I found her she was laying flat on the floor of her cage very thin and skinny. She hadn’t been dead for long. A day maybe?

Allburg said:

Does anyone know how my sweet little bunny died? My sweet 8 month old lion head rabbit died last night unexpectedly and I don’t know how. She was perfectly healthy and she was doing binkys and hopping around yesterday. She was getting skinny but When i tried feeding her more it didn’t help. I just moved rooms and before her cage was in the middle of the room. Then I moved her into a small closet in the dark. But I didnt think it would kill her or anything. She was getting enough air I left the door open. She had plenty of water and food left. When I found her she was laying flat on the floor of her cage very thin and skinny. She hadn’t been dead for long. A day maybe?

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Was she pooping? Did she have hay to eat?

Allburg said:

Does anyone know how my sweet little bunny died? My sweet 8 month old lion head rabbit died last night unexpectedly and I don’t know how. She was perfectly healthy and she was doing binkys and hopping around yesterday. She was getting skinny but When i tried feeding her more it didn’t help. I just moved rooms and before her cage was in the middle of the room. Then I moved her into a small closet in the dark. But I didnt think it would kill her or anything. She was getting enough air I left the door open. She had plenty of water and food left. When I found her she was laying flat on the floor of her cage very thin and skinny. She hadn’t been dead for long. A day maybe?

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I wouldn't call it being "perfectly healthy" when she was getting skinny. Unfortunatly, as a prey species, rabbits are pretty good at hiding health problems, when it gets noticeable to the untrained eye pretty often it's already an emergency. Not eating/pooping enough and/or losing weight are serious problems, good reasons to see a vet asap.

What and how much did you feed, did she eat, drink and poop normally? Did you change anything in her diet?
There's no way any of us can pin down what went wrong, even with a lot of information it's only guesswork.

Anyway, there are other points in your post that make me puzzle: You found her and guessed she wasn't dead for long, maybe a day? For how long had this rabbit been in a dark closet without being looked at and cared for? Rabbit usually aren't happy about drastic changes in their surroundings, what made you put a rabbit into a dark closet, you sure had to have a very good reason for that?

Well, judging from what you wrote, if you consider getting another rabbit - please wait and read up on rabbit care and their needs first. Rabbits are quite high maintanence animals.

Since your problem doesn't really fit this thread title, a own thread might get you better responses.

Some links to read:
http://wabbitwiki.com/wiki/Deciding_on_a_rabbit
https://www.harcourt-brown.co.uk/articles

No changes to her diet. I put her in the closet because there was no other room. She started getting skinny right after that. I got her when she was six weeks. So I have had her for sometime.

Nobody here can tell if it was a coincidence or not, moving a rabbit to a different environment with very different sensation input can cause stress, but there's no way to tell if that was the cause.

I'm sorry you found yourself in a situation so dire that made keeping your rabbit in a closet the only option for you.