So, stasis again (the Poop problem)

[Aki]

So, after almost 5 months of obedient guts, Aki got a bout of stasis last Sunday (of course). I had some metacam and emeprid (gut mobility drug) left over from last time so I gave it to her, gave her some water and I massaged her belly.
On Monday, I woke up early intending to take her to the vet, but she seemed better. She ate a pellet, made 2 small poops and jumped around like normal. I thought that stressing her out would be a bad idea and decided to keep up with the same treatment.
So, now we're on Thursday. I stopped the metacam because she doesn't seem to be in pain. She hops around and acts normal. The problem is that she eats only greens - she eats carrot tops and salade, mint, parsley, spinach and the like. But she still doesn't eat hay even though I opened several bags and put some everywhere in the room. I even tried to put mint leaves under a small stack of hay to no avail. As a result, her poops (there is quite a lot of them now, maybe not as much as normal but she seems to poop regularly through the day and when I put her in her cage for 15 mn yesterday to check how she was doing, it was long enough to find some in the litter tray) are still tiny and weird looking. I picked some Fibreplex (a paste which supposedly contains fibers and probiotics) at the vet this morning and just gave her some, I also ordered some oxbow orchard hay as I remember it being very good and should receive it tomorrow. What else can I do? I'm a bit at a loss... I mean, she IS eating so she obviously can and she is pooping too so no blockage here. Her belly feels normal, no obvious pain. So WHY the hell is she not eating the hay?
To top the whole thing, my dog got a terrible bout of diarrhoea since yesterday which rules out picking grass from the garden as I really don't want to risk giving contaminated food to the rabbits.

 

[ts786]

If I were to take a guess, I think that your rabbit probably still feels very bad and that is influencing the eating habits. I also think that the gut motility agent is probably helping her keep on going.

So if it were me, the next thing I would do is provide a hay through supplementation using Oxbow Critical Care or something like it.

 

[Aki]

Thank you for your reply. In the end, I talked to a vet while taking my dog (yes, 2 animals with bowel problems - I've had a scintillating week scrutinizing the rabbits' litterbox and washing dog's diarrhea ^^') who told me that the GI stasis was indeed not cured despite the poops if she was still not eating hay. So, it was back to the gut mobility drug. For the hay problem, I thought about Critical Care but I've given her Fibreplex (fibers and probiotics) and everytime she seemed more frantic and stressed while I was giving it to her (the gut mobility drug is OK because it's has a water like consistency and it's fast to administer with a small syringe). Aki is a pretty high-strung rabbit at the best of times ^^'. In the end, I changed my approach yesterday and went with mobility drug 3 times a day given as fast as possible to avoid stressing her out and lots of grass all day (I picked a bucket of it and washed it like 5 times to make sure it was OK). I think it might be working because I just saw her moving around the room eating some hay when I went to give her her medication. I hadn't seen her do that in a week. I hope that it means she will be back to normal in a day or two because I have a 5 days long business trip next week and I really don't trust the petsitter to do any rabbit nursing...

 

[squidpop]

It sounds like the grass really helped. One thing that I am wondering after reading posts is did the vet check the back teeth. Sometimes not eating hay can be a sign of tooth problems.

 

[Aki]

Yes, she's back to normal as far as I can tell. The vet didn't check the back teeth, but he's not a specialist. Can that even be done without anesthesia? I actually thought about a tooth problem, but she didn't seem to have a problem eating grass or greens so I hoped it probably that. She's eating hay again now.
I admit that I'm a bit worried because she hasn't been ill even once in 6 years and a half. But she had stasis once last December (resolved in 48 hours) and again 10 days ago and if she began to eat greens and make small poops after only 24h it took 8 days to get her back to normal. Why? Nothing changed, she and her husbunny (who is in perfect health) have been living in the same room for almost 2 years, the hay brand is the same, their food is the same (some pellets and 200g of fresh vegetables everyday)... The first time the stasis occurred, they had been eating 2 hay bags in a row that they didn't seem to like much and, looking at the hay after the problem began I noticed that it was definitely on the limp side. I also had a big tree cut just in front of their room (which has a window opening on the garden) about 5 days before the stasis began and it took all day. So, I thought the stasis was the result of stress and a hay which lacked long blades. But now that it occurred again (5 months after the first episode) I'm beginning to wonder if there is something else. I bought other kind of hay and I thought about mixing some grass with the vegetables. I also put hay directly on the floor in case she was getting lazy and didn't want to take it from the hayrack.
I'm getting concerned there is a problem I'm just not seeing. She looks energetic, her coat is shiny, clean eyes, ears and bum, her front teeth looks fine as far as I can tell...
The fact that I have leave the house for a few days regularly for work (a petsitter comes twice a day to give them food and check everything is fine) doesn't help ^^'.