Very gassy bunny!!

[Audrey]

Chloe's tummy is at it again!

i noticed my poor little bun had the hiccups someyesterday morningso i wasn't very surprised to find her later on in the evening with a mostly full food bowl (a rare site past about 4pm)and a firm tummy...I'm pretty sure she has gas AGAIN...

i kept away all treats after i saw her hiccups, and gave her three doses of simethicone, each an hour apart last night, along with a dose of probiotic before i went to bed...

this morning she seemed to be doing better but still a little off...she is still eating someand is pooping with normal consistency and size just...less

what could be causing all this gas???

She eats unlimited timothy hay and FortiDiet pellets everyday, and is a 10 week old Flemish Giant...

i only give her treats a few times a week, but when i do its usually carrots, bananas or pressed cubes of alfalfa hay...

ALSO

can i give her to much simethicone or probiotic?
The dropper on the simethicone goes by .3mL so i have to guesstimate on how much to give her, and i have the probiotic powder too so its kind of hit and miss on how much she gets...

help?:tears2:

 

[tonyshuman]

Well, the dose for a bunny her size is about 1mL for each. It's really hard to overdose on simethicone because it isn't actually absorbed by the body--it stays in the liquidy stuff that's inside the intestines, and does its work to make the gas dissolve into the liquid there. I have heard of diarrhea as a possible side effect, but never actually heard of a case where that happened with bunnies.

For probiotic, I don't think you can overdose either, unless it contains a lot of sugar in it to make it go down.

I wouldn't give her treats other than alfalfa hay at this point, and at least stop treats entirely until you get this gassy situation worked out. If she still has gas on a hay and pellet only diet, it may be the pellets, or she may have something else going on.

A young bunny's GI bacteria are not a very stable colony. It takes a while for the bacteria there to get in the correct proportions to each other, which is why young bunnies are much more susceptible to diarrhea, mucoid enteritis, and other GI issues, and shy they're much more serious in younger bunnies too. If she keeps being gassy on the no-treat diet, a vet visit with fecal exam is probably in order.

 

[tonyshuman]

You can get a feeding syringe in the pet store or in the baby section of many grocery and drug stores as well.

 

[Audrey]

alright, thank you so much!
i have a feeling it coud be the pellets she is on...
like i said, i feed her unlimited amounts of Kaytee FortiDiet daily, but noticed about a week after getting her that we had grabbed the adult version instead of the juvenile formula...she's about to run out (a day or two's worth left in the bag) so we'll probably switch her over to the right kind when we get more