The story about the bunnies: The Gray One and The Yellow One

Part 3 – The Problems and the Fixes

Sebastian from Croatia

First problems started with Little Yellow One. She got into stasis. Wouldn't eat, otherwise looking fine. Very little stool. So she was treated with Enroxyl, also Sulfadimidine and at the end with piperazine citrate. There was information from one breeder that this piperazine citrate helps to restore rabbits from stasis. At the end she recovered. She was great fighter. My opinion is that she had chronic Pasteurella sp. that she had succumbed to from time to time and recovered again. It took twenty days for her to get well.

The Little Yellow One

The Little Yellow One shared cage with Gray Bear. At some point Gray Bear developed some kind of lump. This lump was situated a bit below his left shoulder, directly under the skin but not firmly attached to the body. Dimensions were 7x2cm. The vet started an enroxyl therapy and the lump somewhat reduced its size. But it stayed there. The bunny recovered to live for couple of years and then he died. I knew about that many months later.

The Yellow Babe was living with me in Split. After some time I noticed her straining while urinating so I took her to the wet, she had radiographies taken and large stone appeared in urinal bladder. So it was removed.

Removed stone

After that I assumed that another bunny, The Happy One (being Babe's sister) might have same problems so she followed the same course after rtg showed a bladder full of mud. So, she was operated, mud removed and she completely recovered never to have any problems of that sort.

The Yellow Babe had another treatment. She received cranberry tea made with demineralised water instead of drinking water. She was also fed with lots of fresh chicory.

The Little Gray One was the smallest and the skinniest of all rabbits. She also had bad temper so anyway she was kept alone in the cage. She got into trouble quite fast, and it was her teeth.

She was taken to the vet to correct this. But teeth continued to grow the wrong way.

4

And that wasn't all. I was asked to take care for the rabbits for ten days since their owner went travelling abroad. As soon as I arrived I saw that one of the rabbits, The Little Gray One has some sort of lump maybe 1cm under the eye. So, I took it to vet and abscess was diagnosed. The surgery was performed and the abscess removed. Article posted on Medirabbit web page was helpful especially regarding use of benzapene. The wound was left open and the abscess capsule cleaned every day for seven days. The capsule was cleaned with spoon and than irrigated with hydrogen peroxide sol., than with Betadine and at the end with Benzapene. There was no pain management. When I asked why there is no pain medication, vet answered that rabbits do cope with pain very well so no pain medication is necessary. Anyway, after seven days the bunny died. Silently, in piece just went away. Now they were seven left.

The result would probably be different if prodigest was used. But is quite expensive. I couldn't afford this and rabbit's owner insisted that the cost of the treatment should be kept at minimum.

After the death of Gray Bear, his partner The Little Yellow One was left alone. At that time there was one cage with The Gray Mouse and Roktalica and another cage with Teddy Bear and The Happy One. And of course, The Little Yellow One.

After some time she became dirty and appeared incontinent.

Skin became inflamed to the point that fur simply fell off. That was treated with local remedy which is produced by macerating plant Hypericum perforatum in oil. The oil is harmless, but also heals skin and any kind of wounds.

Sometimes, a rabbit was placed in warm water with KMnO4 added. That would literally dissolve all the dirt. This bath would usually have more lasting effect.

At the end The Little Yellow One become sad. She could hear others playing but she was alone. So, my friend resolves this by placing The Little Yellow One with Teddy Bear and The Happy One. But that resulted in fight between The Little Yellow One and The Happy One. So, in order to resolve this, The Happy One was removed from the cage so now she is alone in cage and Teddy Bear and The Little Yellow One are together.

The Little Yellow One is now miraculously healed and well. Within few months The Happy One develops same symptoms that The Little Yellow One had before. She develops wet rear end and suffers from incontinence. So, their owner switches them again and again and each time alone rabbit got sick and previously sick rabbit recovers once placed with another bunny.

Time passed and the rabbits grew older.

The Little Yellow One develops torticollis and then spontaneously recovers. My friend learned that rabbits do not need vet care. So, that's how he keeps them now.

The Little Yellow One also twisted her back in a way that her hind legs got paralyzed. I wasn't told of that until later.

So, my friend goes to another trip and asks if I could take care about rabbits. I accept. So there was my task: to wash The Little Yellow One. Now there are three rabbits in one cage: The Little Yellow One with paralyzed hind legs, The Happy One and The Teddy Bear.

To make things easy I transfer all of them to my place in Split. The Happy One was in grave condition. Once she was very beautiful.

The Happy One

Now she looks like that:

The Happy One

She died few days latter.

Now there was The Little Yellow One and her's buddy The Teddy Bear. The Little Yellow One was taken to the vet and she got therapy consisting of high doses of B-complex vitamins and some methylprednisolone (Medrol tbl.). Soon she started to move her legs but eventually went into stasis. Again, no prodigest to save money. It is ridiculous. It is.

The Little Yellow One and The Teddy Bear

Now I was left with The Teddy Bear. His owner wanting him back but I refused. I left him at my place and decided to take care about him.

I took him to the vet to find out that he has pasteurella. His nose was running and the infection moved to the right eye. So he received Benzapene s.c. for 20 days and then Enroxyl for another month. I couldn't afford to loose another bunny so I used my savings to buy him prodigest. That's how he survived. After he recovered from pasteurella, he had nasolacrimal duct obstruction and that was also addressed. Eventually he recovered. In the meantime, he was diagnosed with urinal bladder sand so that was also removed.

He also had some fur problem and that was solved with Stronghold for small cats. He also received some panacur. Now he was much better. I hoped now there was no reason to go to the vet any more.

I knew that problem with urinal sand wouldn't go away. So i searched the net and found article on Medirabbit about liquid magnesium. I researched what that might be and found that liquid magnesium is actually MgCl. I could buy that in the form of "Nigari", Japanese salt for many uses. So I started to give this to the Teddy Bear as addition to his drinking water. And it seemed to work. But I guess I didn't want to have any more bussines with vet so I didn't see that the Teddy Bear showed signs of accumulation of bladder sand by the lack of hygiene. He wasn't able to clean his but so he becomes dirty. There was no problem for me to bathe him. She also started to clean his rear end from the outer side, like this:

Teddy Bear cleaning his rear end from outer side because he feels pain if he does it in conventional way

I don't know how I could have missed this. He was also straining to urinate but I believed that he actually somehow expels his sand. I noticed that there were no more calcium deposits in his litterbox so I believed that liquid magnesium is actually working. But in vain.

The Teddy Bear was exercised regularly in a way that I would chase after him. He was sedentary bunny so I introduced this type of exercises to keep him in shape. But sometimes I would save him and that was wrong. Anyway, on 27. 12.2014 after he was running only four circles I noticed that he can't run any more. So somehow I found something hard on his belly and I knew it was the bladder. It was sunday afternoon. next morning I arranged surgery. Surgery was success, or at least at first seems like this. The doctor had three surgeries from 5pm to 7pm. One dog, one cat and my bunny. So I guess could not spare much time to make sure his uretra is free of obstruction.

Is it so hard to perform the urethral cathetherisation in rabbit during surgical removal of the urinary bladder sand? And it is also convenient and logical choice if one expects to see rabbit's peeing again.. But that could not be.

After the surgery my bunny couldn’t pee any more. It became obvious after few days. So I called my vet on the phone asking her to perform catheterization of the urethra and she said "I don't do that". She also said that I should put him "to sleep". It was passed noon on 31.12.2014. Everybody is preparing for the new year and nobody is working any more. I tried what I could. I massaged him as much as I could to produce couple of drops of urine. He received some carprofene s.c. but the pain become too strong. Maybe something could be made with diazepam (valium) but I got so involved with my bunny so I would not even read your mail. He was in pain and I could feel this.

His fur was twitching every few seconds. Time was running out. I couldn't do anything to help him. I couldn't watch him suffering. So, the only obvious solution was to kill him. I took him to the duty vet. He also agreed that nothing could be done to save The Teddy Bear. So he gave him 0,5ccm of Ketamidor. The vet received another customer and I waited in another room. I held my bunny in my arms. and I caressed him. The drug relaxed him and probably removed pain so he was very relaxed. He looked at me with his big eyes with so much trust. 20 min passed and he was still awake. Vet came back and gave to him another 0,5ccm of ketamidor. After 10 min he was sleeping. Then Euthasol followed. Minutes latter this poor creature was dead.

Teddy Bear, 01.01.2015. hours before he died

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