Sigh. What the heck does this mean

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littlesol

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Well...my wife's tort dwarf buck is about 8 months old...he is suffering from something akin to mucoid enteritis, vet gave him Flagyl and refilled our subq fluids. That was last night. Tonight...he was pooping a good amount now...and suddenly his head flopped backwards, and he went pretty limp. If I hold hm his head is tilted back against his spine, and he is breathing and blinking and drinking if I help him with water....wth is up with this?! Will he live? :(
 
Well. He passed away. But some insight into the symptoms if anyone has any idea, we would be extremely grateful. We are blessed to have been with Nono for his (far too short) time in this world. My heart is broken knowing he's gone. :( ....for a recap...I took him to vet 2 days ago with what I diagnosed as 'mucoid enteritis or somethin', the vet scolded me and said he was too old to get that.(although he had all symptoms) anywho, she prescribed Flagyl and Carafate Susp. And I had to beg the assistant to send me home with a bag of subq fluids. Here we are 24 hrs later, and he started going limp (although his jelly stool had disappeared and he had overcome his stasis it seemed) and his head would flop back to his spine. I wrote my first post, and by the time I finished he was getting neurological movements. But his eyes had life, he was looking at me, not through me but he was watching me, but it was like he couldn't move his body...idk...10 mins and many tears later, Nono has left us. :( so any info on the symptoms would be appreciated
 
I'm sorry for your loss! I am unfamiliar with mucoid enteritis so I found a good website that explains the possible causes, and signs and symptoms.
http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/GI_diseases/Generalities/Enteritis_en.htm

It sounds like symptoms are vague as usually, decrease food intake followed by constipation, than diarrhea... it also says that when you finally figure out what is wrong it's usually to late by then. :(
 
I'm so sorry to hear what happened to your little bun and for your loss. It's so tragic when we are doing our best to try and help our buns and they are unable to recover.

It's difficult to know what exactly might have happened, but if I were to make a guess I would think it was something to do with the brain: such as a stroke, seizure, or inflammation, as the head tilting back like that can be an indicator of brain issues. As for the cause of this, it could have had to do with a negative reaction to his medication, particularly the flagyl as some of the possible side effects can be brain issues and seizures. I had a rabbit that responded badly to a medication once and it turned out to be fatal, so it can happen.

It could possibly have even been the suspension that was used(if an oral liquid susp. was used) if it contained xylitol as a sweetener, as it can be toxic to some animals. Another possible thought is that if any sub q or IM injections were given, and that it was inadvertently injected into a blood vessel.

But as I said, these are just guesses based on the information you have provided and I could be completely wrong as to the possible cause. Whatever the cause, I hope you can find some comfort in knowing that you had tried your best to help your bun with his original illness, which in itself did pose a significant threat to his health and well being.
 
Mucoide enteritis is indeed generally due to a bad weaning, so it affects really young rabbits. The main symptom is a very liquid diarrhea. It could have been cocciodosis actually (it's diarrhea too). Enteropathy mucoidis' symptoms are also really similar.

If you had a rabbit not pooping and then pooping but with a clear jelly around the stool, your rabbit could just have had a bout of stasis. The guts stopped for too long and bacteria multiplied. Your rabbit went into septic choc and died from it. I have had a rabbit die from that three years ago. It was very sudden and I never understood why it happened (he was living with Aki, who didn't get sick at all despite sharing everything with him and is still in good health today) : he was fine, one night he was reluctant to eat... 12 hours after that there was clear jelly in his stools and 24h after that he was dead. It was such a complete shock for me... he was not as young as yours was but it was still pretty horrifying especially, since I couldn't understand what happened at all. I beat myself up for a long time, thinking maybe if I had been more reactive and started the reglan a few hours earlier it wouldn't have happened. But the truth is also that some rabbits a more fragile than others. That particular rabbit had several issues that none of my other rabbits ever had.

If your rabbit came from a petshop or from a backyard breeder (mine came from an accidental litter), he might have had an underlying condition or just have been fragile like mine was. A lot of rabbits produced for petshops have piss-poor genes, unbreeding problems, are weaned too early... so sudden death for young rabbits are unfortunately not unheard of.
 
I'm very sorry for your loss. If you need to know what caused this you could ask your vet to perform a necropsy to try and determine what happened. It's a hard decision and maybe not what you want to think about now. But just an idea.
 
Yes, I am familiar with stasis and the jelly that goes with it, this was much more severe and plentiful, and several other buns got it, we traced it to the Timothy hay, was either not dried properly or had mildew due to the feed store not storing properly...we have lost 3 of our 7 rabbits to this. I am beyond livid. But Nono was the first one that succumbed in such a manner. The others, despite everything the vet gave/had and all our TLC, gave in to the stasis.

Our Hotot girl, after giving us a false alarm of her doing better by pooping a storm up after 3 days of no poo, suddenly when she would stand from laying down, her head would stay on the floor, and her back would arch like crazy, then she would collapse forward(idk if she was lunging or collapsing) and then she died. And we were jumping for joy when she was pooping semi normally.

My sweet Himi dwarf, worked so hard trying to stay with me, literally playing with me and nibbling me up until his last breath(that was hard.) his stool turned enormous. He weighed 2.1lbs and was a year old, and imagine him trying to poo out an average adult males thumb. Yea. And he passed a good 2 inches of it, turned to jelly and succumbed to it. Idk if my vet is dense or if there really was just no hope for our babies....

Sorry for the novel, I just needed to vent. And hopefully nobody has ever/will ever experience this kind of heartbreak.
 

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