Possible GI Stasis

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Oglie2000

Oglie2000

Active Member
Joined
Jan 6, 2013
Messages
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Location
Ohio
I bought a bunny about a year ago from the pet store. They sold it to me as a dwarf bunny however a few months after we had her she definitely wasn't a dwarf. She appears to be a cottontail.

I feed her the only rabbit pellets that our pet stores carry. She weighs about 3.5 pounds I feed her about 1/4 cup of pellets and she has hopper filled with Timothy hay. I also buy fresh greens for her at the store and I wash them off before giving them to her. I usually rotate her daily with parsley, cilantro, baby spinach, mustard greens, and turnip greens. In the summer I pick dandelion leaves (no chemicals are used in my yard).

I wasn't not too concerned until recently. She is peeing, pooping, and eating just fine. Until I did some research I didn't know there should be soft gurgling noises from her stomach when she is by my ear. Her stomach is completely silent and doughy. I have read that both these are bad signs.

I am not sure if I should seek medical assistance or not. Since reading this I have tried some suggestions about getting her to eat more fiber. I have replaced the pellets completely with Timothy hay and I still give her some of the greens.

Her activity hasn't changed at all and neither has her eating or bathroom habits. Should I seek medical assistance for her?

BEED : cottontail
AGE: about a year
DIET: rabbit pellets (1/4 cup) , fresh greens

Thank you for your help
 
Hi and welcome to RO!
I would be very surprised if you actually got a cottontail from a petstore. The wild rabbits we have here in North America are actually a completely different species from our domestic rabbits. You may just have a domestic rabbit with agouti coloration. If you post a picture we may be able to help you ID her breed.

If she is eating and pooping regularly, I wouldn't worry. My recommendation is to learn what's normal for your bunny - what she normally sounds and feels like. I can sometimes hear borborygmi (gut sounds) with my stethoscope, but I'm not sure that I'd be able to hear then with just my ears. Now when I have had a rabbit with gassy stasis, I've heard his tummy slosh when he ran around. That's much more of a cause for concern.

She sounds healthy and her diet sounds good to me. If you're concerned though, a trip to the vet for a physical wouldn't hurt.
 
if her appetite is normal and both the volume and appearance of her poops are normal, then there's nothing to worry about :). those, along with being hunched up (in pain) or repeatedly lying down only to get right back up (can't get comfortable) are the main symptoms of GI stasis.

as a note, more than half the veggies you're feeding (parsley, spinach and mustard greens) are high in OA and therefore are supposed to be limited... each of them should be given no more than 2-3x a week, none of them should be fed on the same day as other high OA veggies and (based on deductive logic using other info from the HRS site), high OA veggies should be limited to about 1/3c per 2 lbs body weight per day ;). it would be a good idea to add more variety to her fresh food diet - lettuces (other than iceberg) are a good and reasonably inexpensive addition to the diet.

veggie info:
http://www.rabbit.org/care/veggies.html

if you decide to leave pellets out of her diet (which is a viable way to go), you want to replace them with more veggies and serve as wide a variety of veggies as you can (herbs tend to be pretty pricey, so you might consider growing some yourself to save money).

not sure what the one pellet brand you can find locally is, but if it has any seeds, nuts, dried fruits/veggies or other colorful bits in it, you need to either pick them all out or find another pellet (if you choose to feed pellets). ideally, you want a food with around 12-14% protein and 20-30% fiber for a house rabbit. sherwood forest (only available online) is a *great* food - no unnecessary carbs, no added sugar/molasses and it's all natural - http://www.naturalrabbitfood.com/sherwood-forest-natural-rabbit-food/ . oxbow essentials is another great brand, you can probably find it at a reasonable price on amazon or ebay.
 
According to Lucile Moore, rabbit expert & author of Rabbit Nutrition &Nutritional Healing, it is virtually impossible to avoid health problems long-term without pellets. They can be stopped for awhile for a specific situation, but need to be resumed at some point.
 
Let me clarify some things I forgot to post.

I wasn't going to keep her off the pellets I just wanted to do it for a couple days to encourage more eating of the hay. After checking in before I left for work real quick today I gave her some pellets.

I also forgot to add that I give her lettuce too. I usually get romaine or some other type of lettuce that isn't iceberg. I do however give her a bit of iceberg lettuce about once a month as a treat because she really likes it.

I also give her broccoli because she loves that too but I know that is high in OA.

Any suggestions as to what veggies I could try for her would help me out too. She loves dehydrated apples. I give those to her at treats (I even got a dehydrator for Christmas to make them for her). She hates carrots, so I am not really sure what other veggies and fruits to give her. I have read on care sheets that she can have as much cliantro, mustard greens and turnip greens as she wants but the parsley, broccoli, and spinach are high in the OA.

Here is a baby picture of my bunny so maybe you could tell me what type of bunny she is. I also added her Halloween and Christmas pics.

emmy.jpg

001.jpg

010.jpg

emmy christmas.jpg
 
Oh, she is so adorable and cute in all her bunny outfits. I can´t mine to sit still for two minutes never mind get clothes on them.

Mine loves banana, pear and apple (in strict moderation) and they say they like berries,I´ve seen some nomming blackberries on here.

Greens wise mine eat cilantro, endives, carrot, beetroot and radish tops, all kinds of green leaves including red and green chard, watercress and rocket. They love fresh herbs such as basil, parsley, tarragon, sage and mint. And of course, you could pick dandelion which mine adore and I get from my friend´s house. They also love apple twigs including the leaves.
 
Thank you for all you help.

I will just keep an eye on her to see if she changes in any manner. I'm going to see what other veggies I can get without little OA in them.

Based on her pictures can anyone tell what type of bunny I have? She does have some of the characteristics of a cottontail. She is very territorial to the point where I am cleaning her home and she gets really mad at me. She also doesn't seem to like people she doesn't know, she gets shy. However when I have her she is calm to where she will let me put an outfit on her.
 
Why don't you try collard greens and kale? My rabbits LOVE kale (which, again, should be given in moderation as I heard) and eat collards pretty well. Interesting that she doesn't like carrots. She is very pretty!
 
Thank you for the assistance. I tried the collard greens but she doesn't seem to like those either. She will eat it but doesn't seem to enjoy it as much as romaine lettuce.
 
I may have missed it, but is your bun spayed? If not, that would explain why she is so territorial. If you got her spayed that would help the behavior :)

She actually looks quite a bit like our girl Tiana. We're not sure what breed she is either, but she's definitely domestic, and yours seems to be a domestic bun too.

546476_3838823165561_1476859450_n.jpg
 
I think I may have solved the problem. She was eating and pooping normally, however she wasn't drinking as much water as she used to. She was also shedding a lot, I brushed her 3 times in the past couple of days and got so much fur of her. After looking around I saw that, that might be a symptom of a hairball instead of the GI stasis. I bought some of the malt flavored cat hairball medicine and gave that to her. The first dose a week ago didn't do much but she had it all over her so she might not have gotten it into her. This week I tired putting the medicine on a popsicle stick and she ate the medicine. The past 2 days she has been back to normal. She is running around more, more active like she used to be, and drank about half the bottle of water. She is also eating a lot more too. She picked up her hut and threw it because she ate all of her pellets, she of course always has hay but she got mad about the pellets.

I think that may have been the problem but some sites say that hairballs don't really affect them that it is GI stasis. I am just keeping an eye on her, and seeing as after giving her the hairball medicine she is more active and drinking more water, I feel like she may have had some hairball problems.

Kipcha to answer your question she is not spayed. I am trying to find a vet office that will take bunnies some where around my area. My dog's vet said they are only taking dogs and cats. I am not sure how that works because when I got my first hamster 5 years ago, the vet took him in when I thought he was having some sort of breathing problems. But anyways I am on a search for a good vet that takes care of bunnies.
 
Personally, I don't recommend using those hairball laxatives in rabbits. They're intended to coat the hairball in cats, but they typically do more harm than good in rabbits. Some people have luck with papaya enzyme tablets that are supposed to help break down the hair. I'd recommend keeping up on grooming and just pushing hay when they're molting to help keep the hair moving through them.

This is our listing of rabbit savvy vets in Ohio. I'm not sure where you're located, but perhaps this can help you find a vet nearby. http://www.rabbitsonline.net/f21/oh-rabbit-savvy-vets-10099/
 
Second to what missyscove said. Hair/fur blockages can cause GI stasis or slowdown, but it's my opinion that increased water will be better at pushing the hairball through rather than a greasy laxative. Another trick similar to the papaya tablets (or fresh or dried papaya) is fresh pineapple juice or fresh pineapple. I'm not sure if I believe those things either. :shrug: I do believe in probiotics and increased water intake though.

Some vets will see pocket pets, or even rabbits for office visits, but aren't willing to do surgery on a rabbit. Unfortunately there usually isn't a lot that can be done for hamsters and the like, maybe prescribe antibiotics or something, but surgery on a rabbit is much more complex. A lot of vets are afraid of doing anesthesia on a rabbit and the internal anatomy is different from a dog or cat, so the procedure isn't rapidly transferable from those species to rabbit. Another good place to look is your local House Rabbit Society (rabbit.org), rabbit rescue, or humane society. They may have vets they use for spay/neuter.
 
Thank you for the options, they are all too far away for me. I live on the border of PA and OH. I am about 1 hour 30 mins northwest from Pittsburg, PA, and 15 mins East of Youngstown, OH. I have a vet hospital litteraly right outside my door but I am not sure they take bunnies.
 
I do believe my bun was suffering a bit of blockage. When I gave her the hairball stuff it kinda worked but I think it was too sugary she would be hyper for 2 days. I decided to try the papaya enzyme tablet. She really liked that and I have no difficulty giving that to her, unlike the hair ball stuff.

Before I tried this she did poop but not as much as she did as a baby. I wasn't really alarmed because she was using her litter box regularly and the poop wasn't small it was normal just not as much. After giving her a tablet of the papaya enzyme, she really used the litter box about as good as she did as a baby. She also seems a bit more relaxed. When I let her out to run around, she does some binkies and runs around then lays down all stretched out. Before she would run around doing some binkies but would just sit normally, now she seems like she can run off her energy off and comfortably stretch out and relax.

As I try to find a vet for her, I will try this out. With her daily brushings, at least right now because I think this is a heavy shed for her, I will try the papaya enzyme tablets too (not too often though). I'll just watch her.

I also got a dehydrator for Christmas for her. I have recently cut up some apples and dried them, because she loved the dried ones from the pet store. At least with me dehydrating the apples there are no preservatives or added sugar in the apples or fruit I am drying for her. Don't worry I don't give her a lot just a small slice or two a day as a treat.
 
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