Muttering

[amauthor]

I have an older bunny (10 years, lionhead), and in the past few months, he'd begun muttering to himself quite a bit. It's a deep, quite sort of grumbling. I wonder if he's uncomfortable or has old man aches. (Last year he had a bad case of GI stasis where he was much more clearly in pain, grinding his teeth together, not being able to find a way to lie down, etc.).

Mostly the muttering happens at night, after he's had his dinner and has settled into his bed. Could he be in pain? Or perhaps he's just old and cranky? If it is age related, is there anything I can do about it? I do have some Metacam leftover from his GI incident, but I feel like that might be overkill, especially if it's just general discontent and not pain.

Anyone have an ideas?

 

[JBun]

Maybe a weakening of the soft palate is causing the increased vocalization sounds? Weakening of the soft palate can sometimes happen in older rabbits/animals. There's a mention of it occurring in older rabbits in this following link.
http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/Respiratory/Differential/respira_diff.htm

There's always a chance it could be due to some discomfort from something like arthritis. If you would like to try to see if daily metacam makes any difference, maybe ask your vet(or an experienced rabbit vet) about giving it a try.
https://rabbit.org/vet-listings/

 

[amauthor]

Thank you so much. The video in the first link you sent me is exactly the noise he's making. I will trying giving him a low dose of metacam and see if it makes a difference.