I have to disagree the the bunny “expert” in the second video. First, pellets should NOT be alfalfa based unless the bunnies are less than a year old or malnourished. Pellets for adults should be timothy based pellets. Their hay also should be timothy hay and not alfalfa hay.
Second, vegetables are NOT treats for bunnies. It should be made part of their diet, equal to pellets. I do agree that Hay should be their primary food source.
If you get hay at a pet store, it’s very expensive and comes in small volume. This might make you hesitant to give your rabbit lots of hay to lay on, eat and poo on. Instead, go to your local farm and pick up a bale of hay, which costs a fraction of what the pet stores will charge and will also come in a much larger quantity.
Bao Bao is fully recovered!
We started off with a male bunny that was cold and scared, not eating good pellets or vegetables, no eating hay and having mushy poop. Now we have a relaxed female bunny who’s eating only good pellets, eating 2 bowls of fresh vegetables a day and a continuous amount of hay. She’s also pooping regularly and they’re good looking poops too.
This is the first time Joey and I have really had to work at getting a bunny healthy and we’re quite proud of ourselves for being able to do it. Before Bao Bao, Ginger was the tough one but she never had to get force fed and her only probably was that we had to cut her veggies really thin so she could gum it into her mouth (she’s doesn’t have teeth). I feel like now, we could help with fostering and nursing other bunnies back to health.
… but then again, the original plan was to get Bao Bao healthy and then have the House Rabbit Network adopt her out. That obviously has not (and will not) happen now. Once a new bunny comes into the house, we’re too easily won over and we’ll fall in love and won’t let them go.
Joey and I are going to New Hampshire with Tiffany the first week of May and we’re going to have Suzanne bond my two current bunnies, Juju and Ginger, with Bao Bao. It will be a good time too because Suzanne’s bonding can also double as bun-sitting for us while we’re away in New Hampshire. And the month and a half from now till the bonding will give Bao Bao time to relax and adjust and stay healthy.
It was Bao Bao’s birthday this past Wednesday. I’m a little bit late but… Happy birthday Bao Bao!
She’s doing SO much better. I’ve decreased her critical care feedings to once a day. She’s still getting her medication 3 times a day to keep her bowels moving. She’s going to the bathroom on a semi-regular basis but her poops needs to improve in quality. We’ll continue to work on that.
She’s still not eating pellets and I’m not sure if she’s just pushing the hay around and peeing on it or eating the hay. I tend to think she’s just pushing it around. The good news is that she is eating vegetables. She eats all her parsley and the leafy parts of red-leaf lettuce. She doesn’t like romaine.
She’s doing a lot better but she still needs more time to recuperate. Bao Bao’s been very angry with me because I’m the one that force feeds her and holds her down during the day to give her medication. I think she sees me as a threat.
We’ve been doing 2 days of the regimen on Bao Bao. And tonight…I think we have a breakthrough. I saw her eat out of her pellet bowl for the first time and I also saw her poop for the first time. I still force fed her tonight though because she ate only a little and she seemed like she was struggling to poop out one poop. But it was a regular size poop, so that made me happy.
Hopefully this is a step in the right directly. My wish is to wake up tomorrow to see a big mound of poop from Bao Bao!
On a different front, Ginger is quite aware of Bao Bao now and she’s been making futile efforts to get to Bao Bao’s 2nd level. When Ginger fails, she gets upset and she comes down and chases Juju, which makes Juju defensive and then they fight. I witnessed this first hand tonight and a tuff of Ginger’s fur went flying from Juju’s bite. Ginger’s the instigator here and I have no sympathies for her.
Easter is either my favorite or second favorite holiday of the year (competes with Christmas), because rabbits are simply everywhere. It is also the only time of year where it’s perfectly acceptable to stand in the “seasonal” isle of CVS, holding 2 different stuffed bunnies in your hand, try to decide which one to buy and no one judges you when they walk past.
Rabbit Hutch
PetSmart is selling “rabbits.” I love it!
Filed under: Health, Stasis | Tags: Critical Care, Metacam, Metoclopramide, Stasis
Bao Bao has definitely not been well lately. She hasn’t been eating on her own and she has minimal poop. So she went for her first vet visit today in Randolph, Compassionate Care.
The Vet did a once over on Bao Bao. She is definitely a girl. She is spayed (found out by shaving her underside and looking for a scar). She has good teeth – no molar spurs.
So this means that the reason why she’s not eating is because of drastic change in diet and the environment. She’s definitely in the early stages of stasis – which is when a bunny’s intestinal tracks stop. This can be deadly to rabbits in a very short time if not treated immediately.
The Vet recommended several things to do to get Bao Bao eating again and her intestinal tracks moving:
Bao Bao is to continue on her critical care regimen (which is force feeding) until she eats on her own again. That’s what the critical care bag and the GIANT syringe is for. I’ve been feeding her about 35 ml of critical care a day, but the Vet increased the amount to 110 ml a day. That’s 3 of those GIANT syringes worth of wet, oatmeal-like food. She is also getting 3 doses of metacam for pain. She’s not in pain now but once her stasis starts moving again, she will be because it hurts to pass that much feces (or so I was told). She is also being given Metoclopramide (orange stuff) which is a medication to move her bowels.
As for regular food:
The Vet suggested that since she was so used to “junk” pellets, I need to slowly ween her off it. I went to PetSmart tonight and bought this pellet/seed/corn/fruit mix. I never thought I’d buy this crap for my buns but if this will get her eating again, “junk” food is better than no food. I will mix my good pellets with this stuff and slowly decrease the “junk” portions.
