A awful tragedy for my dear friend.

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So a very dear friend and breeder has experienced a terrible loss to her herd. In a two week period everyone of her kits under three months old has suddenly died. No runny stool,no discharge and no warnings. Fine one day dead the nest. About 30 kits so far and more expected to go. Whole litters dying still with there moms dying at once. All the adults are healthy. The rabbits are good fresh hay and greens intoduced slowly. She is thinking about ending her breeding program over the loss. Does anyone have any insight? Feel free to ask questions. Thanks for reading

What brand of food? The last time this happened to me - we had some bad food and I know that has happened to others as well....

You know she was worried about the food cause it started happening after she bought a new batch of hay. The pellets are standard alfalfa pellets (not sure of the brand) and the hay is good timothy. We checked it for mold and it is fresh and clean. If its the food then why is it just the kits? Also about six weeks ago she lost three kits. There bellys were soft and felt like they were full of jelly.

Oh no, so sorry for your friend.

I think coccidia, particularly liver coccidia, can cause sudden death with no symptoms. Have they had random fecal floats?


sas ray:

I too lost all my kits this spring. None of mine made it more than two days. I took them to the vet and they couldn't find anything wrong. They did find some coccidia, but they said that it was not significant. I treated them anyway.

Now I haven't lost a single kit all summer, so I don't know the actual cause...

The kits had no runny stools. Could that still be the coccidia? Is it contagous? Say if one kit had it and she handled that kit then went to the next hutch and handled others would they get it to? I'm not sure of the floats.

ray:

Is there possibly insecticide or something on the hay that is affecting the babies while the adults can tolerate it? I lost some adults suddenly and we found no cause, I just sanitized everything real well and so far so good.

Couple months ago, I had a few rabits died on me, I found our it was the "hay", It was moldy, dusty, yellow slim on it. I didnt noticed it until i got in the middle of the hay.. So I had litters and older Jr's died on me, And I saved my chin mini rex buck, He was any day of dying from the hay....

I_heart_Fraggles wrote:

The kits had no runny stools. Could that still be the coccidia? Is it contagous?

Click to expand...

Yes and yes.


sas :clover:

Then this must be it. I read online that it can be passed threw an adults feces. Over the summer she introduced at least 5 new rabbits into her herd.

I lost a couple of kits and they had potty bellies and loose stool. I treated the whole herd with corid and didn't lose any more. I now treat my whole herd in the spring and fall.