Help Bunny with a dirty bottom

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Tam24927

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Location
Columbus, Ohio, USA
Hi

I am new to the forum but not new to bunnies. I have 10 !!!

My problem is one of the girls seems to have a dirty butt 2 to 3 times a week. She has unlimited hay and fresh water. They have about maybe a1/2 c pellets twice a day and salad twice a day. Salad is romaine hearts with a small piece of celery and carrot occassionaly a grape. Ia m wanting to know if maybe I am feeding too much??What is the general amount of food for an adult rabbit?? She is 2 years old. I use Purina Rabbit Chow.

If anyone has any advice I am glad to hear it.

Thanks


 
Hi there and welcome!

wow..10 rabbits..Im jealous! You will definitely need to start a blog when you have a chance so we canmeet the whole gang.

With regards to feeding, her weight and age will determine what amount of food is appropriate. I know that for an adult rabbit who weighs around 4 lbs, about 1/4 cup of food daily is recommended.

Heres a great thread Naturestee just made up for feeding rabbits. It has loads of good info on amounts to feed and what makes a good pellet and such.

http://rabbitsonline.net/view_topic.php?id=16340&forum_id=1

Hope this helps! And remember, if you do decide to limit her pellets, do it gradually ;)
 
Just wanted to add that many adult rabbits become senstive to high levels of protein even if they were fine on that pellet before. So a lower protein pellet may help. Usually the best pellets for this are timothy pellets,although there are 15% protein alfalfa pellets available through many feed stores that may do the trick.

Also, some rabbits get poopy butt because they can't tolerate their veggies or treats.
 
HI

I love my 10 buns!! Did not plan on having so many but they are addictive!! Actually I got a female and my son got a female HAHA and love happened and we had 6 babies we could not even think about giving away. The daddy passed away last year very young and I rescued 3 others so thats how we have 10.

Thanks everyone who posted. I will do more research on the pellets and see if that helps.



Thanks again I will work on getting pictures on here.
 
Many Time, dirty butt is the result of a nonworking diet or food intake. No iceburg lettuce instead use green leaf or other greens. It may be other things in the diet as well . Check with your vet and try to work through it. My Buns eat pellets but on Timothy Hay Pellets by OxBox plus plenty of Fresh Tmothy Hay . Try working on the Diet. It is important with such a bottom to keep bun inside and away from flies, this is critical and I cannot stress it enough . My little guy cotton had the same type bottom so I washed it all the time . Sadly I did not realize that flies also strike at wet fur. To make a long story short a flie struck cotton in the house and we had no idea until he began acting oddly . The entry site of the fly larvae was in a skin crease and not visible at all . I found it late one night and rushed him to a 24 hour emergency animal hospital. They were notwell informed on rabbit care though .The cleaned out the pocked and sent cotton home . They told me to clean it twice daily and noted that he tolerated it well with no pain meds .They gave me no pain meds and boy were they ever wrong . He hid the pain very well but on the third day he went into a cardiac arrest from the pain of the cleaning and that was it at 7 years old he was gone forever. I learned later that with fly strike the stringest pain meds are always first, usually by IV along with IV antibiotics.

Try to work with the diet

take care
 
Hi Arrius

Thanks for the reply. What does everyone recommend for a proper diet??I feed about 1/4 C purina rabbit chow twice a day along with Romaine lettuce hearts a small piece of carrot and celery also twice a day with an occasional cracker, grape or apple slice as a treat. They have unlimited Timothy hay which comes from bunnybales.com ( it is the best hay ever I almost want to eat it) and fresh water daily. Is that maybe too much food in a day??All the other bunnies are fine just the occassional dirty butt with the one. Any info would be greatly appreicated.

Thanks

Tammy and all the buns
 
Hi Tammy ,

I am not familiar with the Purina RabbitChow , Is it pellets only or is their other things mixed in? I have seen Kaytee Rainbow recomended on other sites. Hopefully someone her on the board can make a suggestion. If not I am not familiar with the policies of this board and hope I do not break therules rules by mentioning justanswer.com. This is a site that I have now personal affiliation with but have used in the past. You pay a small fee to have your questions answered. They have experts from just about every walk of life . Their is a pets section which is monitored by Vet Techs a swell as DVM's and lat people with a lot of experience . I know I will probably do injustice to the spelling of her last name but I think itis DR Chernoa. She is a DVM in Upper State Mass. Has specialty degrees in exotics and now her stuff very very well about Bunnies . IF you post make sure to say you would like a DVM response. This way even should the other read your questions they will defer to the DVM's and when one happens along they will answer it . IF happy with the answerthey get whatever you offered to pay . They mayeven have a very low to no pay button ,I cannot recall. The other options are like $8 , $10, $15. I would watch this board first though as your answer will most likely appear here free :)

When Cotton was living , before we knew , iceberg lettuce use to make him real messy. Casey never has that problem because she usually eats more hay in a day than most large farm animals. LOL She loves Timothy hay ,I usually fill her large hay holder at least threetimes a day. Every timeI go by she is at the hay holder.Luckily this is a very good thing though . I will see if I can get you someinfo on the littlekids bottom and diet :)

Have a Good Night ,


 
Good Morning Tammy ,

Before I head off for work I wanted to leave this info for you . The following is courtesy of the House Rabbit Society or HRS.If this works great but if in the end the problem just will not clear then the best would be to see the Vet to test for any medical casues. I am told that in many cases though fecal with the consistency of a soft putty or mud is usually diet related. A true case of liquid stool though with the consistency of water is cause for a Vet trip right from the start. Hope the following helps ,again it is from the HRS. Take Care ;

(HRS Info On Poopy Bottom )

Often a rabbits "poopy bottom" is caused by a diet that is too rich. We find that cutting back on the pellets and increasing their intake of mixed hay helps tremendously. Although rabbits love the gourmet blend pelleted food, (with seeds, nuts, etc), it is not a healthy choice for your rabbit. The most important part of a rabbit's diet should be UNLIMITED hay. This includes Timothy, oat, orchard grass, Bermuda grass and alfalfa hay.

Rabbits should also have at least 3 different types of fresh vegetables each day, such as parsley, romaine lettuce, cilantro, kale, carrots,etc. See diet links for recommended quantities.

If you live in San Diego, you can purchase large boxes of freshly-mixed hay at various locations throughout the county (see "hay sources" in this website). If you're not in the San Diego area, you can inquire at a feed store and see if they will sell you a flake or two from a bale.Or, you can purchase hay through mail order from Oxbow Hay (http://www.oxbowhay.com), or American Pet Diner (http://www.americanpetdiner.com).

On a hay and veggie diet, many rabbits need little or no pellets in their diet. If you do want to continue feeding her pellets, make sure it is a brand high in fiber or for adult rabbits, try the Timothy pellets available from Oxbow or American Pet Diner. If your bunny has been eating pellets, don't make the change to a hay/veggie diet too abruptly. Start by giving her unlimited hay now, but introduce the veggies slowly, and begin to wean her off the pellets or cut back considerably once you are sure she is eating a lot of hay

Be sure to read the many articles available about rabbit diet on this website as well as the National HRS site (http://www.rabbit.org).
 
Pumpkin, our 6 year old, often has dirty bottom. It usually happens when she has had too much salad and/or too many pellets. The recommendation that I read is about 1/4 cup of pellets per 4 lbs. When Pumpkin experiences this problem, our bunny savvy rescue leader recommended going to a strictly hay and water diet until the problem cleared. Hope this helps....
 
Hi Tammy!

Different pellets work better for different rabbits.Personally though I prefer timothy pellets such as Oxbow Bunny Basics/Tor Kaytee Timothy Complete for adult rabbits. Purina is a decent food but is often too rich for nonbreeding adults as it's meant for babies and breeding rabbits.

Check out the link Haley gave you. It should explain just about everything you need to know, plus links to additional info.

As to the hay only diet, be careful! Don't do this for very long as it will result in nutritional deficiencies. My vet strongly recommends against ever doing it, actually.
 
You're absolutely right not to do the hay only thing for more than a very few days...that's all it takes for Pumpkin's issues to clear usually....if it's looking like it's going to go on longer than that, we reintroduce the pellets slowly.....thanks for clearing that point!
 
If it just started out of the blue, you might want to have her urine tested for a UTI. Urinary Tract Infection.

Sometimes that can cause dirty bottoms or fur balls to accumulate resulting with dirty bottoms.

-Carolyn
 
you are feeding a good amount of veggies but only one thing (i have had the same experience)

I see you live in ohio (you may not be able to get this food ), but anyway the first thing you should do is get off of purina food for any of your pets. I'm serious. my rabbit domino had the same thing so i switched him over to blue seal bunny 16 and no problems since. Purina is not a very good brand of food and has many not good things mixed in it. It has by products as the first ingredient and many of the rabbit owners on this forum said tha=ey will never use this feed because their bun got diarrhea, dirty bottom, and sometimes just sick. Purina rabbit chow has corn and wheat and stuff like that mixed together with rabbit food. so basically rabbits eating that stuff are eating poultry (goose duck bird) food.
so if you havent switched over to a new food or havent found anything on purina my suggestion is to find blue seal food or oxbow food and something that has at least 16% protein and18% fiber.

http://rabbitsonline.net/view_topic.php?id=16168&forum_id=16
(check out this thread) in infirmary


 
Hi! Tam

Not sure why no one has mentioned it but inmy research on Rabbits I have read that Celery is really bad for Bunnies, Which you mentioned you dofeed to this Bun.

Hope one of the more experienced people on here correct me if I'm wrong on this but I remenber reading it Somewhere!:dunno:

Hope Your Bunny is doing Better. :bestwishes:



MikeE.

"Tell Me,I'll Forget"
"Show Me,I'll Remember"
"Involve Me,I'll Understand"




 
The only problem I've really heard of from celery is that the strings can cause problems. If you cut the celery up then it's okay. Although celery doesn't provide much in the way of vitamins, it's pretty much just crunchy water so there are better vegetables to feed. Not to mention that some rabbits can't tolerate veggies at all.
 
Hi All

I am pretty sure it is not the veggies they have been eating them since they were big enough and there has been no problems. The celery is cut small and destringed but I may stop it and try something else. I really believe it is the pellets. I am looking for different brands in my area so far not much selection.Does anyone know anything about Tiz WizSelect or Buckeye basic pellets?? I keep running acrossed those two brand a lot.I really appreicate everyone's help.

Thanks

Tammy
 
I have also heard that Celery lacks in any type of beneficial vitamins and nutrients for the Bunnies. I had a very repuatble Rabbit Vet in Mass. recomend some veggies I had never before tried with my lopp. one of the veggies was Bok Choy . I must confess even I have never eaten this Bok Choy. So I go to the store and could find no organic Bok Choy. I normally feed the Bunnies Organic Veggies which I also eat. I thre caution to the wind and bought some regular Bok Choy. I came home washed it off thoroughly and placed a piece in Casey's hut. She is a 6 year old lop pwith the attitude of a 90 year old. She is white with Seal Gray ears .The hairline between her ears stands straight up all the time so we call her "Boo" ( looks as if she has had the daylights scared out of her. So she sniffs this Bok Choy for a minute and the sits and looks atf or some time. Finally she nibble but the runs to the other side of her hit and begins thumping and continued it for some time. The wife says to me ,what did you do to Boo, I reply gave her some Bok Choy. I removed the Bok Choy and she calmed down . Today I laid a second piece in and she ran to the other side of her hut and began thumping immediately LOL .I guess its safe to say she has acquired a great distaste for Bok Choy . Guess I 'll not be trying it :)

On another note my buns do well with Organic Green Leaf Lettuce and go crazy for organc Kale. I buy all the veggies in a very fresh state and store them in the crisper drawer of the frige . best of luck with your bunnies.
 
Every bunny is different. Even my picky princess bun has now decided she likes Bok Choy, and she'll usually only eat lettuce, parsley, and cilantro for greens and leave everything else to her husbun.

Tammy, I'm not familiar with either of those brands. I'd check the protein amount because that's where most buns get theiri ssues from. You'll need a lower protein pellet. If you can't find any in the local feed stores, try a pet store.If they don't carry anything like that they might be able to order it for you without the expensive shipping costs of buying over the Internet. The two most common brands that I've seen in petstores (both are good) are Oxbow Bunny Basics/T (I feed this) and Kaytee Timothy Complete. Kaytee Rainbow Exact is sometimes easier to find. The protein level is good but there's not much fiber so make sure they eat lots and lots of hay.
 
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