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Victoria

Victoria

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Jun 17, 2009
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Sydney, , Australia
This morning I heard a thump as if my rabbit fell inside his cage. I went in to investigate and noticed that he was really weak. My fiance picked it up and it did not fight him as usual. We have not been feeding him pellets because he had a near death choking episode and his brother died from choking on 29 January 2010. Red had a choking incident about 2 months before that. Aslo Black had an episode of head tilt and nystagmus and he was put on several medicines - baytril, bicillin by injection and another one against ecuniculi. From h is blood work they could not diagnose what was wrong. It died shortly afterwards from his pellets going the wrong way.

Today Red is looking really weak and cant walk fast.

He was not going out of his cage much because I had examinations and so did my fiance. Also we had a very pregnant guinea pig. He only went out about 5 days ago for a short time and again he was sitting in his cage all the time .

Could it be because we did not exercise it much or is this something else.

We gave him carrots, greens, pak choy and timothy hay and he is eating now.
 
Do they eat basil? I got some yesterday and gave it to him. It had really strong smell and I was worried it is not good for him. May be it was the basil? But he had basil before but not often...
 
Basil is fine for a bunny to eat, but all new foods should be introduced slowly so it doesn't upset their tummies. Although, that would show up as runny poop or a gas attack if it didn't sit well with him.

Has the bunny been eating or drinking? How about pooping and peeing?

I would advise the first thing to do would be to get some fluids into him. Body temperature to not chill him.

A lethargic rabbit really is an emergency though. He should go to a vet as soon as possible.

-Dawn
 
They can eat basil and it isn't the basil that is causing this.

This is not from lack of exercise either.


it sounds like this strange condition is affecting all your rabbits, causing loss of balance , weakness, possibly weakness in the muscles used for chewing and swallowing ..

It is not normal

Could you give as much info as you can about Red

Please read the following link and post as much info as possible.

http://www.rabbitsonline.net/view_topic.php?id=44529&forum_id=16

Many of these symptoms are suggestive of the rabbits having been poisoned or somehow being exposed to a toxic substance.

Some of the symptoms (particularly Black) are suggestive of e-cuniculi but losing the ability to swallow does not fit the profile.
 
Hi Thank you for your advice.
My rabbit is soon 3 years old. He is dwarf mix (was sold as such in the shop where we got him from.. now I Know what the shops are like). We live in Sydney Australia. We took our other rabbit to the vet who did not find anything wrong with him apart from lesser than normal amount of red blood cells, plus he gave him different meds for POSSIBLE conditions like ecuniculi. But he could not pinpoint any real problem from the blood test and wanted more blood tests.

Since it was not explained why, we did not do the additional blood test (within such a short period too).

The Black rabbit died from chokingasI wrote already.

I dont know how much the Red rabbit weighs, we thinksomewhere around 2 kg (similar to Black).

The vet told us that Black was underweight and that the reason for this is because he is not forming enough red blood cells - this could be caused (we were told) by many things including virus like calici or myxo or cancer or just a virus of some other kind...

We are suspecting poisoning as well butvet said he was going to go to the pet shop where we got the cagetotest it but I dont think he did. I dont know any more about the cage.I will try to find someone to test the cage. We live inthe old building may be there is something somewhere that we are missing like painton the walls that they somehow ingest. So I am going to scrape some paint of the cage and take it to university or other place and ask for a test.
We think it could be the cage because we also had rats and they all died - one from mycoplasma (diagnosed by two vets) but the other four died within weeks of each other and the vets did not find a cause for this (we only got one to the vet, the brother of the myco one and he lived to be 22 months, the first rat lived 10 months.. the younger rats all under one year olds& too quick to get them to the vets -plus we could not afford it - with all of them so sick so close to each other and me being also in hospital and having surgery).

so to cut this long story short we do not know what it can be I still think poisoning is the only thing can suspect at this stage because the rats they had neurological difficulties. it could be something in their foods may be that we buy from supermarket or pet shop?


It could be that because he does not eat that much because of hisswallowing problems, he could be starved.. althoughI always feed all my animals twice a day... may be I was not feeding him enough with the guinea pig being pregnant and giving birth to a dead baby...

I promised from this day on never get any animal from a pet shop... I already promised not to get rabbits but gotten on impulse a pig two weeks after Blacks death.

She was pregnant we were told and she gave birth to what we think was a "lethal white" baby - it was pure white and when we came home despite being fully formed it was dead.

This happens when two "roan" genes are inheritedtogether from mumAND dad pig... sorry I wrote so much..

Red looks better after having a big breakfast. It eats normal. Pees ok and so are his poos. I only noticed that in the past 6 or so month he did lose some weight and also he pees more than before that. Black peed A LOT but from blood test his kidney function was normal! Black also drank A LOT - all the time drink and then pee. He di dnot have diabetes (blood work ok too in that area).
 
I'm pretty confused here. I have some more questions, but at this moment, I'm going to guess poison as well. At one point, I had a cage where one rabbit in it died very unexpectedly, I cleaned and disinfected it and put a different rabbit in it and he too died within 24 hours of being put in that cage. I had all kinds of tests run on stuff from that area and couldn't find anything, but to this day, I feel it was the cage. Needless to say, that cage went in the trash. I was too afraid to even take it to the recycle center like I normally would.

Ok, here are my questions and forgive me if I missed the answers somewhere, but I got confused.
So initially, there were 2 rabbits, a black and a red? Correct?
Were they housed together?
Did you get them from the same shop?
Did you have a necropsy done on the Black rabbit? If not, are you certain it died due to choking?
Were the rats in the same cage at some point? And the g. pig?
Is there a common area where the animals have time out of their cages?
 
I think I remember looking up mycoplasma once and finding that it can be transmitted to rabbits, and would be a low-level infection in them that caused kind of minor symptoms but would be difficult to detect... Don't quote me on that though.

I frequently use a pupil dilation/constriction test to check for poisoning. Many poisons will cause pupils to dilate more slowly. This could help you determine if his lethargy is due to neurological effects of a poison. Put him in a dark room, and then quickly shine a flashlight (aka torch) in one of his eyes. Notice how quickly the pupil constricts (and the black part gets smaller). You will just have to guess if it looks like a normal speed. It should be pretty fast.

Bunnies can be lethargic also due to lack of air or water, lack of nutrients, and bacterial toxins. A bunny in advanced stages of stasis can be lethargic because they're in pain, cannot remove waste from the body, and can't get nutrients into the body. A bunny with a systemic bacterial infection (sepsis for instance) will also be lethargic due to bacterial toxins in the blood stream. Also, a bunny with cecal dysbiosis (diarrhea-related) can get lethargic because the bad bacteria in the GI tract are releasing toxins into the blood. Bunnies that are really dehydrated or having trouble breathing can also be lethargic.

I agree that any time that a bunny's lethargic he needs to go to the vet. Check for heart/lung problems, GI issues, and dehydration.
 
Sorry I wrote so confusing.. I often get asked again when I write things :).. sorry..
We had two rabbits - Red and Black.
They initially were housed in one cage (where the pig is now) but later they fought due to being not neutered bucks.
After we bought another, bigger cage, for Black - it was for sale as it housed some other rabbits at the pet shop and we bought it from them.
We did not disinfect it because we did not think they would have been ill and in any case we got both rabbits from the same shop, they were sold in one group housed in a cage in that shop.
The rat with myco lived together with another rat - both now died, in a two level cage.
First rat (Morti bad name!)died from myco at 10 months on 22 April 2009 and second (Bear) died aged 22 months one month ago.. we had a lot of dead animals since 22 April last year.:(
We took the rats to a specialist - exotics vet. Nothing helped. We took more than once to this and also to a "normal" usual kind of vet... none could help them and myco is not curable anyway.
Then we bought 3 young rats from another shop (not realising it must be common for pet shops to sell unwell or badly bread animals) -they all died earlier this year within weeks of one another!
They all had neurological problems: one lost control of his back feet and another was just getting weaker and weaker until he died, he had jerky movements, they all lost weight. The third one was sneezing (the only symptom) then also gotten weake, had neurological problems and died like went to sleep without any othe myco symptoms like cough pneumonia etc.
From symptoms he was put on some antibiotics for myco (we thought that is what it was) but did not respond.We did not take him to the vet as by that time we could not afford it.

The pig is now in the Red's cage and Red is in the Black's cage... This is weird because he is now sick..... He still looks odd, he looks similar how the rat that died of myco looked.. may be it was not myco the vets could have been wrong becausethe rat diagnosed with mycoplasma Mortidid not have lung congestion, just some sneezing and also he had head tilt at one stage... may be it is not connected.. sorry if I am confusing you again. May be if it is confusing still I will have to type it out for myself read it and post again in lesser amount of words..

SO we have four cages - two for larger animals one level cages and two several levels (2 and 3) for rats. Two older rats all lived in one cage and 3 younger ones lived in another one with 3 levels.

The pig is in the rabbits cage where Red was before Black diedand Black's cage now belongs to Red- it is bigger.
We are sure Black died from choking, I witnessed it him choking after eating pellets. We did not know where to go for necropsy and if it is expensive. I was very shocked plus had to have surgery myself -so I never insisted my partner do it.. I guess he did not think of it either...

 
Victoria wrote:
Sorry I wrote so confusing.. I often get asked again when I write things :).. sorry..
We had two rabbits - Red and Black.
They initially were housed in one cage (where the pig is now) but later they fought due to being not neutered bucks.
After we bought another, bigger cage, for Black - it was for sale as it housed some other rabbits at the pet shop and we bought it from them.
We did not disinfect it because we did not think they would have been ill and in any case we got both rabbits from the same shop, they were sold in one group housed in a cage in that shop.
The rat with myco lived together with another rat - both now died, in a two level cage.
First rat (Morti bad name!)died from myco at 10 months on 22 April 2009 and second (Bear) died aged 22 months one month ago.. we had a lot of dead animals since 22 April last year.:(
We took the rats to a specialist - exotics vet. Nothing helped. We took more than once to this and also to a "normal" usual kind of vet... none could help them and myco is not curable anyway.
Then we bought 3 young rats from another shop (not realising it must be common for pet shops to sell unwell or badly bread animals) -they all died earlier this year within weeks of one another!
They all had neurological problems: one lost control of his back feet and another was just getting weaker and weaker until he died, he had jerky movements, they all lost weight. The third one was sneezing (the only symptom) then also gotten weake, had neurological problems and died like went to sleep without any othe myco symptoms like cough pneumonia etc.
From symptoms he was put on some antibiotics for myco (we thought that is what it was) but did not respond.We did not take him to the vet as by that time we could not afford it. And the rats were never in the same cage. The pig is now in the Red's cage and Red is in the Black's cage. This is weird because he is now sick..... He still looks odd, he looks similar how the rat that died of myco looked.. may be it was not myco the vets could have been wrong becausethe rat diagnosed with mycoplasma Mortidid not have lung congestion, just some sneezing and also he had head tilt at one stage... may be it is not connected.. sorry if I am confusing you again. May be if it is confusing still I will have to type it out for myself read it and post again in lesser amount of words..

Basically we have foour cages - two for larger animals one level cages and two several levels (2 and 3) for rats. Two older rats all lived in one cage and 3 younger ones lived in another one with 3 levels. The pig is in the rabbits cage where Red was before Black diedand Black's cage now belongs to Red- it is bigger.
We are sure Black died from choking, I witnessed it him choking after eating pellets. We did not know where to go for necropsy and if it is expensive. I was very shocked plus had to have surgery myself -so I never insisted my partner do it.. I guess he did not think of it either...
Click to expand...
hi,sorry to get here late,,you are in australia,,so myxi-would be a concern/definately because jabs are not allowed.//.communicable,,virus,s or bacteria can play a big role with animal health,reguardless of different housing,,because we can transmit these dreadful germs,pathogens,,etc.,on our clothing,,hands,,etc..//.,what i would suspect is pasturella,,or myxi.//.my sincere condolences for your loss...james waller:pink iris:
 
Hi
I dont think it is myxomatosis (myxo) because it would have been visible would it not be.. Black died months after initial problem with head tilt. Myco I was referring to mycoplasma - a bacterial illness that rats get but rabbits dont think they do get it often..
 
I thought pasteurella is when they sneeze. Only rats sneezed the rabbits did not. Black had a head tilt though few months before he died from choking.
I am reading about myxomatosis now. I hope it is not that.
 
The cages that the rabbits were in were bought in 2007 (so It cuold not be the cage that transferred that infection). Thank you for advice.
 
Red does nto look too bad right now. He is back to shaking his cage even though he went for a walk for hours today. back to being his demanding self. it really could be that I underfed him!!! for fear he chokes on food. We dont give any more pellets and I was told not to give too much carrots as they are sugary and a lot of calcium. My partner did not want to give him apples for fear he will choke (I now disregard and do give him apples, but without skin -obviously without seeds and core too..) . I give him more small carrots and other dark greens.. he looks a bit better.
 
I wonder if E cuniculi could be happening. With Myxi, you'd probably see myxomas, which are big lumps, usually on the face. I wonder if calcivirus or VHD could be it? I don't know a lot about these diseases because they aren't common in the US, but I will look at them sometime when I have time today.
 
Hi thank you a lot for your advice. It looks like he is ok now. He is still a bit thin but muchmore active. I really think we have underfed him. He is not falling over. I thought may be calici too but he is getting better usually the virus would have progressed.
We feed him more of everything now. Because we took him off pellets in late January and with winter on the way in Australia it is much colder and he needs more energy. I really think tht he was "just" starving. Now I make sure he gets bigger meals. Until we figure out what to give him in terms of main meal we just give him hay andthe carrots and greens and an occasional apple. Poor bunny it seems to be our feeding practice rather than a contagious disease.But with so many animals sick and dead I was worried. I hope he keeps well. We cant always buy him timothy I dont know if thats ok.. sometimes we just buy "meadow hay" from supermarket it is cheaper but it seems older hay. It is sold approved by RSPCA.. but who knows... Timothy is from a pet shop but a small bag is $18!
 
:faint:So I typed out and thought I posted this whole long thing about Myco and the strand that effects rats vs. the strand that has been seen in rabbits (much, much, much less common) and posted a site for a study about it, and so on and so forth, and I hit post, my computer goes....and boom! No post!!! AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Oh, well. Basically what I said was that Myco can effect Rabbits, it's a different, but related strain then that which effects rats. Maybe I'll just type it up as a post for the infirmary library, because I don't think that this is the case here.

I think you were right he's STARVING!! I understand the fear of pellets, but they are the easiest way to give a balanced diet... He definitely needs more nutrients.

Jen

Also, I do believe that your rats were correctly diagnosed. Myco can be seen as an upper respiratory infection and head tilt can manifest from a resulting ear infection and balance issue, however as I think about it, the symptoms also fit a pituitary tumor, which is just so sad and horrible to watch...
 
I did some research into Myco--I remember now that it was because SnowyShiloh's rats had it and she has a bunny with EC.

I hope some pellets will help. You can smoosh them up a bit if that will help. I just worry that the throat is smaller due to something, like an abscess in the back of the throat or neck, or inflammation due to dry air or something.
 
tonyshuman wrote:
I hope some pellets will help. You can smoosh them up a bit if that will help. I just worry that the throat is smaller due to something, like an abscess in the back of the throat or neck, or inflammation due to dry air or something.
Click to expand...
I was wondering about this as well, but the choking was in Black, so I'm really hoping that it won't effect Red... I'm also wondering what would be different with the pellets, other then the obvious dryness, that would make him choke, but nothing else would? I can understand that maybe the salad is wet...but the hay is just as dry as the pellets and it would all be chewed...

Any thoughts?
 
Yeah, that is a good point that hay is just as dry as pellets and he ate it fine. That's a good point. Maybe he's just literally inhaling them--my guys like pellets enough to do that sometimes, I think--and they're getting stuck. Perhaps a less tasty pellet? Or feed it one pellet at a time? Would take forever. There's also these balls we have here that have a tiny hole in the bottom, they have to roll it around to get pellets to come out, and they only come out one at a time.
 
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