Sick Bunny

[sweetkat20]

Our 9 month old pygmy drawf stopped eating her pellets over the weekend. She was still eating all of her treats and hay and drinking water. Last night she was lethargic, had made smaller sized poops but ate her salad, was drinking, but had a wet chin. This morning I got up and she was the same and within 30 minutes she died! We are devastated!!! We were heading to the vet at 8 and by 6:30 she was just gone!! I have researched and read and can't find anything other than GI problems that could have caused this, but not so quickly!! Any ideas or has anyone seen this before? She has never had the first problem ever!!! My daughter is going to be devastated!!!!

 

[Catlyn]

GI stasis can happen fast, even for seemingly no reason.
One other possibility i read up on when one of my boys just went weird to dead in 6 hours, was heart failiures (either due to an immunocomprimise, being a megacolon-ish bun, or lingering after effects from a nasty persistent infection) as he'd been normal and eaten everything up until that point.

 

[JBun]

I'm so sorry for what's happened. It's difficult to know for sure what the cause could have been. With your rabbit showing signs of a possible problem a few days previous but still continuing to eat semi normally, it's doubtful it would have been a digestive problem. Digestive issues will often result in a lack of appetite first. If I were to guess, I would suspect a possible heart problem, maybe infection/sepsis, or RHDV, particularly if you have cases of it in your state and area.

Another possibility could be if there was a problem with your rabbits food. Moldy food can make them sick and can be fatal. Or sometimes a contaminated batch of pellets can lead to sudden unexplained death, particularly if you had just started a new bag of food. Again these are just guesses, but would be the most likely causes that I can think of.