Long term treatment of snuffles

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M

myhairyrabbit

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Blainville, Quebec, Canada
Hi everyone,

I am so glad I found this forum, it is gonna help my rabbit so much.I have a 7 years old spayedEnglish Angora doe .I do have a rabbit savvy vet but I need more advice.I just finisehd a 21 day long Baytril treatment for a snuffle infection.She is getting her symptoms back faster and faster : this time only 4 weeks and voilà, wet nose, sneezing and difficulty breathing.She is still eating and has not lost weight( maybe 0.5 pounds, it comes and goes) .I was very depressed and ready for THE BRIDGE but she seemed way too perky still so I searched and found out that she can be on long term antibiotics. Even for the remainder of her life.I was wondering :

- does it have to be Baytril ? Chlorpalm seems to work better but it might be just an impression and I read that it is hard on the liver

- can she really use Baytril everyday until the end ?

I do have probiotics that I want to use but is there anything else I should know ? I read that half a tablet once or twice a day is sufficient, what is a tablet of Baytril I have no clue.

I am going to the vet the day after tomorrow and I already printed out some info for her but any additionnal advice will be welcomed.I want to keep a happy and healthy bunny for a long time !!!!
 
I had a mini-Rex rabbit who had the snuffles. When she was young, we took her to a vet to try and get rid of her infection. She gave our rabbit Baytril alone which didn't work so well. Two other vets recommended a cocktail of baytril, pennicillin and something else. OUr rabbit had treatments for 1 month on baytril alone, then 2 months with a cocktail, and finally 6 months on a cocktail. At first the drugs beat down the infection so she could have some quality of life. The cocktail of drugs worked best. As she got older, it worked less well.

Dusty finally reached the point, at age 7, where she needed constant medication to just stay alive. But she was slowly getting worse even with the meds. We finally had her put down and it was the most difficultdecision we ever had to make. She was a wonderful pet -- very affectionate and sweet tempered, like a dog.

Anyway, I don't think you can rid a rabbit of snuffles. If you can control it with your natural drugs and periodic bursts of baytril + other meds, I think that's the way to go. Good luck.
 
Sorry I didn't get to this before you went to the vet. IF the Baytril causes some improvement in her symptoms, you may just have to treat for a very long time or do a multiple antibiotic protocol, like Westislander mentioned. There may be multiple populations of bacteria present, some that are resistant to Baytril and some that are not--and that's why it never seems to fully go away but it still responds to the Baytril. Chlorpalm is a good choice--it seems to have low incidence of GI side effects but can be dangerous for humans to handle, so it is more a matter of your comfort working with it. I haven't heard a lot about it causing liver problems in bunnies. Another antibiotic you might consider is Convenia, a treatment that is given every 5 days by injection in rabbits, and it is a drug related to Baytril. Penicillin G can also be useful as an injectible, and Zithromax does a lot of good in persistent upper respiratory infections but has worse GI side effects.

It is a battle to stay ahead of the bacteria sometimes, as they gain resistance to different antibiotics. It should be possible to treat respiratory infections to the point of no symptoms, but the bacteria will always reside in the rabbit at a low level, and the rabbit will then be susceptible to further outbreaks of disease.

It is definitely not too late, and you don't have to be resigned to giving Baytril every day for the rest of her life. The Baytril in tablets is not made for rabbits--it's for dogs and is liver flavored--so I don't know if your vet is dosing it correctly.

These sites can help you determine the right dose for many antibiotics. The generic name for Baytril is enrofloxacin.
http://homepage.mac.com/mattocks/morfz/rx/drugcalc.html
http://www.medirabbit.com/Safe_medication/Antibiotics/Safe_antibiotics.htm

Antibiotics or sterile saline can also be used with a nebulizer to treat lung infections more successfully.
http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/Respiratory/respira_main.htm
 
Came back from the vet, switched from Chlorpalm to Baytril as of wednesday night.

My rabbit is 7.4 pounds and her dosage is 1ml morning and evening.

Bayrtil concentration is 20mg/ml.I can assure you , it is not the liver flavored one, if anything it is the strawberry/watermelon flavor.

She is way perkier but stil breathes hard a bit.The vet said that contrary to last time, she heard a little rasping in her lungs.I wish she would be completely better now as I have started with the first dose monday night but any amelioration is good.

She will be on baytril for two months after, it is probably BACK TO THE VET !!!

I swear, I could have had a vacation in the sun with the money I put on her.What fun would that be, a big old beach without rabbits ????

Yhank you for all the advice, hope I won't be back soon for another catastrophe....
 
That dosage of baytril is on the low side. I am getting the rabbit drug calculator saying she needs 33mg every 12 hrs, and she's getting 20mg every 12 hrs. The Medirabbit site has the same dose (5-15 mg/kg, your bunny is 3.3kg). You might want to ask the vet if the dose is correct. Underdosing an antibiotic can lead to it not working and resistance developing. I would want her to have the high end of the dose since she's had this for so long, unless she has previously had GI problems with Baytril.
 
Crapola, what to do now ? Tonight she is better but Ithink that her breathing could be improved.I did see sparks fly from her hind legs when I tried to pick her out of her cage for free time...Talk about about a 180.

I don't want to antagonise my vet but I still want a healthy bunny for a long time.She has had at least three treatments for snuffles up to now, maybe it's time to get the big guns out.

I have lost way too many guinea pigs to that stupid disease from them not being treated properly and aggressively enough.

I will calculate what it represent in cc/ml, adjust and monitor.There was no real problem with her digestion.I watch her like a hawk ( what a bad choice of word ).



Keep you posted and thanks for your advice.


 
Hello everybody.

I am now halfway through a one month course of Baytril, 2.2ml, concentration 20mg/ml.It does not look much better than when I first got to the vet.My rabbit is still perky, has not lost an ounce and eats normally.She jsut breaths hard and sneezes from time to time.Some days are clearly better than others.

It looks like all the antibiotics do is keep the disease at bay without eradicating it completely.

Should I change antibiotics ? Should I go with injections of antiobiotics ? This didease is driving me nuts.

Any advice ?


 
This is going to sound completely crazy, so please print the web page and take it to your vet for another opinion. However, I used Perfect Food Berry for my mini lop with snuffles.
http://www.gardenoflife.com/Product...PerfectFoodsupsupBerry/tabid/655/Default.aspx

I had been treating her for well over a year and spent a small fortune trying to make her feel better. Finally I had someone recommend this and I thought they were nuts. I took it to the vet who looked at the ingredients. She said it had healthy stuff in it and couldn't hurt. So I added 1/2 a teaspoon to her food in the morning IN ADDITION TO the antibiotics the vet wanted to use. Becky scarfed it down, no issues with taste (I take the stuff and personally I think the taste takes some getting used to, but I'm not a rabbit).

I gave antibiotics for two more weeks and continued the perfect food for an additional two months. All signs were GONE! Now if she gets stressed and her eyes start to get watery I will add that to her food for a couple weeks and it clears right up. It has probiotics, lots of healthy greens, and antioxidants so it helps boost the body's own defences to fight off the infection. I also never get colds now. It really is a great product, and no I get no money from the company. I just really believe in it.

I was being told that if this last round of antibiotics didn't keep it away she would be on antibiotic eye drops for life. That was well over a year ago and I have given her more perfect food, but not another drop of antibiotics.

Also, you might want to ask your vet about orbax if the others are not working. That's what finally worked for Becky. It's a newer drug and technically only approved for dogs and cats, but she had experience using it on her own rabbit and it worked very well.

Best of luck and hope your sweet bun is feeling much better soon!
 
As others have mentioned, once a rabbit has had snuffles, there's a chance that it will never go away. The symptoms will disappear, but they might reappear again in the future. My vet says this is normal, and he has had cases where the rabbit had to get a nasal flush once a month.

There's a chance that your bunny may have bacteria that is resistant to Baytril, in which case you will need to add to or replace the Baytril you're administering. But before you know for sure what other antibiotics to give, you need to know what your bunny has. For this, you should have your vet do a culture on your bunny's nasal discharge. My bunny just recovered from a case of the snuffles, and the culture revealed THREE different types of bacteria. Luckily for us, all three are sensitive to Baytril.

Going back to the topic of nasal flushes, my vet also mixes in antibiotics in the saline solution he flushes the bunnies with. So in addition to clearing the nasal passage, the antibiotics also get to reach the bacteria a lot closer than just administering it orally. I took my bunny in to his office four weeks in a row to get this done.

Don't give up, and don't let the snuffles bring you down. My bunny showed symptoms of the snuffles for 5 weeks. It has been 7 weeks since she first started showing symptoms; 2 weeks without symptoms! She is going to stay on her Baytril treatment until we run out (about 2 or 3 more weeks left) just to make sure we get all the pesky bacteria.
 
Ok, went to the vet yet again.My bun was breathing too fast even though she was alert, eating and stomping.My vet her breathing was a concern but we are not at the awful euthanasia stage, far from it.She said nose cultures are not reliable enough in her experience, she offered to xray her lungs even though it would not help determine treatment per say ( I chose not to do it ) and she offered to do either injections of penicilin or go back to Chlorpalm.Now the treatment cost for the injections is just plain insane with absolutely no guarantee of success so I chose to administer Chlorpalm since as far as I can remember it did help in the past.We are talking chlorpalm palmitate in a concentration of 250mg/ml.According to the drug calculator I should be giving 0.65 ml/cc twice a day but I am giving 3.7ml/cc twice a day.I have given it to her before to that concentration with no ill effect so I know it is not harmful but where in the living daylight did she get that dosage ???? I do trust her yet everywhere I turn they talk about small dosage and here I am with my bucket of Chlorpalm !!!! Any idea ? Buny is happily destroying my carpet as I write so fingers crossed she will stay in good shape for a while longer...
 
I am unsure about the dosage of chlorpalm (other than medi-rabbit dose ranges) butI do know that our administrator Pipp's vetwho works in Richmond British Columbia very often uses a combo of chlorpalm and injectable benzathine penicillin ( Every other day) for severe infections

Would your vet consult with another vet ?

Dr Joseph Martinez's website

maybe he also would talk to you..don't know?

http://littlepawsvet.com/



 
I work at a vet, and my bunny has snuffles. I treat him only when he has a flare up, and use a combination of antibiotic injections with the best thing in the world! It is called Critical Care made by Oxbow Animal Health. It has all of the necessary nutrients, vitamins, and even timothy hay and aids in proper gut physiology and digestion (which is especially important when being on antibiotics). I am so glad that I found it. One of our clients actually recommended it, and ever since we have seen nothing but great results, not only for bunnies but chinchillas, guinee pigs, etc. It comes in regular flavor as well as apple banana which my bunny loves! It is a powder, and you mix it with water until it is like a paste a little bit thicker than.. say.. the consistency of greek yogurt. It is amazing stuff. Prescription only, but it's so cheap! I would recommend it to anyone with a bunny who is not eating, on antibiotics, or anything of that type. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask.
 
Calculating dosages can be a bit tricky. You said 0.65 ml/cc and that's a sign something went wrong in your calculation. 1cc is 1ml. You'll want to take the rabbit's weight in kg, multiply by 30-50mg/kg. Then divide by the concentration of your solution: 250mg/ml.
weight rabbit (kg) x dose mg/kg rabbit x1/(concentration of drug mg/mL). Then you end up with mL in the numerator.
http://www.medirabbit.com/Safe_medication/Antibiotics/Safe_antibiotics.htm
Maybe the concentration isn't right on the bottle, since 1mL of a 250mg/ml solution would be enough to treat a 5kg rabbit, which is dang big. They might have diluted it more and not written it on there? I don't think a rabbit given 3.7mL of that solution would survive. Maybe it's 250mg/L instead of mL?
 
From a previous entry, check out:
http://www.gardenoflife.com/ProductsforLife/FoundationalNutrition/PerfectFoodsupsupBerry/tabid/655/Default.aspx

My bunny Sabine came down with a case of snuffles last week. In surfing the web, I found this forum and the idea to use Garden of Life, Perfect Food Berry. Sabine is responding beautifully! She’s on baytril BID, and a concoction that includes the Perfect Food Berry, oxbow critical care, baby food (mango-banana), organic pumpkin, and sugar free cranberry juice. This is day 7 following this regiment. Her congestion is noticeably better, very little discharge from her nose, her eyes have completely cleared up, she’s running around, eating and drinking very well on her own. Yay! I will always have the Perfect Food Berry on hand.
 
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The story I heard is that these bacteria are always present in their respiratory system. It's when they get older and their immune system weakens that these infections, snuffles, begin. I was given an antibiotic, forget it's name, but it was expensive! Had to syringe it into Bunny's mouth...which she did not like. It did work, there'd be no sniffles for a while, and then they'd start again and we'd do the antibiotics again.
 
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