Bloating stomach in bunny

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smay

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I have 3 flemish giant babies, 4 months old. yesterday I lost one and he was bloated/swollen almost double his size. I checked the other 2 and they were starting to get swollen bellys also. I have been treating them with the infant gas drops 4 times a day 7.5 cc and mixing 1/2 water 1/2 pedialite and pushing that. One is doing better than the other and less swollen and will still drink the mixture from the bowl. and I have given him dandolion leaves and parsley to which he is chowing down. The ohter one is totally opposite and I'm having to give him the liquids by syrynge and he does not want any greens or food at all. I did manage to get him to eat a few stems of the parsley last night but that is it. I put him on a heating pad and rubbed his belly last night and he seemed to like that. He is still swollen this morning and seems more larthargic. I am very worried about him and not sure he will pull through. I am going to get some terramycin this afternoon and going to try that also.

Is there anything else i should be doing or trying? From what I have read on the internet it sounds like the bad bacteria in the stomach is attacking the good bacteria and causing them to bloat up with gas.......

I've heard this is going around and many people are losing babies, is this true, is this a virus that seems to be going around?

Please respond with any additional information or anything else i could try, I don't want to lose these beautiful babies.....


 
Hi,

This sounds like a classic case of what we call "cottontail syndrome"....aka cecal dysbiosis. It is a bacterial issue in the gut. Not the bad bacteria attacking the good....actually the good bacteria is dying off due to a change of climate in the GI. Good bacteria always controls bad bacteria....so when this happens, not only due you have to worry about enterotoxins from the decaying bacteria....you also have to worry about the bad bacteria growing. Most of the time it is Clostridium but we have also found other harmful bacteria including E Coli.

Treatment for this, especially in young rabbits, can be quite challenging. I attack by using a probiotic, such as Bene Bac (never use yogurt) to help stabilize the pH in the gut and return it to a natural acidic state which makes a favorable environment for the beneficial bacteria. While there may be gas in the gut, the main problem is the irritation of the lining of the gut caused by the Clostridium. The lining will actually die. The visual presentation is many times fecal material covered in a greenish or yellowish colored mucus. This is the body's attempt at protecting itself. I also respond with lots of fluids....both orally and by sub-q. I do tend to use an antibiotic, Metronidazole, to help in the gut. It's not so much the antibiotic aspect of this drug but much more the anti-inflammatory properties offered by this drug. We have recently been testing an equine product, BioSponge, that appears to be very effective at binding the enterotoxins produced during a GI event. Early testing with this product appear to be very promising but time will tell. Terramycin is totally inappropriate for this condition....as it is in most any situation. I do not use that drug here as, in the long run, it causes more problems than it can ever benefit.

And contrary to what you may read in different places, there is very little chance of a virus causing something like this. It is most likely bacterial but could be protozoal (such as toxoplasmosis) but that is rare if conditions are clean. My bet would be bacterial.

I would suggest lots of fluids, continue with the simethicone, seek the help of a vetto getMetronidazole and inquire about using BioSponge. Keep them warm. Good luck.

Randy
 
Agreed with both of the above. I also think that's a bit too much simethicone for bunnies of that size (as I mentioned on a previous topic), but that's just me.
 
Thank you randy for your information. I have since lost another buck and the doe I'm afraid will not last much longer. I did get the probiotic yesterday at Tractor Supply, its the one for goats i believe but they said that would work better than the horse one as it had more vitamins. They bloated up so fast that I think treatment was too late, I pushed fluids with pedialyte but they refused to eat, and they basically just gave up. I have one buck that seems to be bouncing back though. He never stopped eating even with the swollen belly, I don't know what the difference was..his belly seems to be going down also. I did not see any stool with the greenish/yellowish mucas, as a matter of fact there was no stool at all, they stopped going. The one buck that is doing better had a light colored diarrhea that had a funny odor to it. It reminded me of parvo in a dog, there is that smell they get, this was just like that, a very distinctive small they all developed, even if they were not pooping.
I've heard too this is like colic in horses??? I'm also hearing that it is going around right now affecting many breeders and that it is only in rabbits under 6 mo. the older ones should not get it. Any of this sounding true?
 
Is it called ProBios? That's a good one. We usually prefer to use the Horse formulation of that, but I think the goat one will be ok.

It needs these microorganisms: Guaranteed Total (viable) Lactic Acid Producing Bacteria: 10 million colony forming units per gram (Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus plantarum, Enterococcus faecium, Lactobacillus casei)

However any microorganism that acidifies the gut is ok. Acidophilus pills for people are an ok source as well, you can cut open gel caps of them and use the dried powder inside.

The symptoms that you're saying sound a lot like enterotoxemia. Basically the bad bacteria in the gut have overpowered the good bacteria, and they're releasing toxins into the animal that get to the bloodstream, causing the not eating and giving up you mentioned. A vet can give you a drug that will bind these toxins and keep them from harming the rabbit. There is one available over the counter (at least on the internet) called BioSponge, and one called Questran (cholestyramine) that a vet can give.

I don't know a lot about colic, but I'm pretty sure it's similar. It's not something that can be passed around though, it's something that an environmental stressor seems to activate, such as colder nights with fall coming, fall rain, etc etc. It can affect older bunnies, but their guts don't seem to be as sensitive to stress as the younger ones.

Since it's not greenish/yellowish and you mentioned a particular smell, it may not be E. coli, mucoid enteritis, or Clostridium sprioforme, but may be Tyzzer's disease, caused by Clostridium piliforme, or proliferative enteropathy, caused by Lawsonia intracellularis.

See this reference: http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp?cfile=htm/bc/171319.htm

For some enterotoxemia diseases, there are antibiotics that can help, such as Metronidazole. It's important to determine what type of enterotoxemia it is to see if any kind of antibiotics will be helpful, and I think adding a toxin-absorber like BioSponge or Questran would really help.

Sorry you lost the buck. Good luck with the doe, and also be careful to disinfect the area where these guys are to prevent transmission to the rest of the herd. Older bunnies can get these diseases, although it's much less common, I think because their gut bacteria are a more stable population.
 
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