Odd Eye Infection in young kits

I have been raising Holland lops for many years now. I have two pedigree Holland lops that I bred recently. It is the does first litter. The buck has had other healthy litters. Male is 2 years old and female is 10 months. She had 7 young. They were kept warm and well fed. Shortly after birth 2 died. They were both smaller than the others. At 15 days old some eyes were not yet opening. There was a milky like substance oozing from eyes after they were moistened with warm water. Pictures were taken yesterday of what the eyes look like when opened up as they keep sealing over. We have been putting raw goat milk from our goats into eyes to try to relieve any infection. We've been doing this treatment twice per day as eye infections are greatly helped with raw milk from past experience with pink eye and other sorts of eye infections. Today, I woke up to find one of the bunnies with no eye problem to be dead! It was the smallest out of the five that were left. Now, I have four 19 day old kits. All nursing well. 2 look fine but are not super active. The two that are dealing with eye infections, are more energetic and seem generally healthier if the eyes were fine. One of these two kits has one eye normal but the other has both eyes that keep sealing. Wondering if anyone has dealt with this before or has any advice.

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Are the symptoms similar to any of these? Perhaps @JBun or @SableSteel would know?

I’ve never had an issue with eyes resealing after we had to help them open, but I would consider getting a rabbit savy vet to look at it. We didn’t have to consult with a vet very often, but they can be very helpful.

Most likely a contagious bacterial infection spreading between the rabbits. I would quarantine mom and kits from all other rabbits, and get a proper exam and treatment with a knowledgeable rabbit vet.

https://rabbit.org/veterinarians/

This is called nest box eye, you can look it up to get some more info. Nest box eye isnt usually fatal though, there is likely some other, possibly related issue going on with the kits.

SableSteel said:

This is called nest box eye, you can look it up to get some more info. Nest box eye isnt usually fatal though, there is likely some other, possibly related issue going on with the kits.

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Thanks

SableSteel said:

This is called nest box eye, you can look it up to get some more info. Nest box eye isnt usually fatal though, there is likely some other, possibly related issue going on with the kits.

Click to expand...

We had a few cases of this with young kits but don’t recall an issue of the eyes resealing. I do know that we got a medicated eye ointment from the vet that cleared it up.