Help! Juni won’t accept syringe feeding!

[MissMary]

(You can skip this part)

I’m not really sure if this is the right place to post but here goes-
I posted a few weeks ago asking about a runny eye and when to see a vet, well things improved a little but then they got worse so we took her in. At the time she was acting normal, gave us Tobrex to apply to her eyes twice daily. It didn’t do much and two days ago she started licking her dewlap a lot and lost interest in her food and water. Called the vet and thankfully they had an opening 20 minutes from then.

(Ok here’s the important part)

Anyways we just returned from the vet with Juniper, apparently it’s a minor form of the snuffles and she was prescribed 1 tbsp of critical care 5x daily for 2 weeks and 1.7ml Chlor Palm 2x daily both with a syringe (the injectable version of the Chlor Palm was on backorder until May). We just tried feeding her some of the CC (Apple flavor) and let me tell you it was NOT fun for anybody involved. My poor white bunny has CC all over her self because her dewlap is so big we couldn’t find her mouth and when we did she clenched shut (I had her burrito’d and in a football-ish hold with her back end under my armpit). My boyfriend got bitten, I ended up in tears and she didn’t eat a drop. I’m gonna try mixing it with pumpkin and try again but my real concern is the medicine. The vet recommended mixing it with strawberry or maraschino cherry juice so I’m gonna buy some before trying to give it to her. But if I can’t feed her CC then I don’t know how I’m gonna get her to take her medicine twice a day for a whole week!!! If anybody has any tips for me I would appreciate it so much!

[Bam]

Well, in my experience, bunnies don’t normally enjoy being syringe fed. It’s VERY common for the CC to end up on the bunny, on your t-shirt, your face and your wall-paper during the course of syringe feeding. Pumpkin often helps though, they often love pumpkin. You can mix the med with pumpkin too if she likes pumpkin.

This is sth that requires some practice and a huge amount of DETERMINATION. Like Roberta here said to her bunny Pascal when he had to be syringe fed: You will eat this even if it kills me.

There is a space between the front teeth and the back teeth where there are no teeth so clenching is no use. Find that space and take care to deliver the CC (or med) slowly, so she swallows and don’t get the CC into her lungs. You may have to make the CC-sludge rather runny. And try to get some in her if not all.

Patience, firmness and practice and it will get easier. Last fall I had to syringe feed my bunny Yohio for a whole month. It was very difficult at first.

edit: Both Roberta’s Pascal and my Yohio were fine eventually. 

[MissMary]

Thank you for your reply
As it turns out she will take the medicine fine (I mix it about 1 part medicine to 2 parts organic pear+pumpkin+banana baby food) but she will only eat it off this little silver spoon we have. What a princess lol. However she doesn’t like the CC at all no matter what we mix it with (unsweetened Apple juice, unsweetened applesauce or the baby food) she will take a few licks off the spoon and then turn away. She is eating hay though as I write this which makes me happy because although I will try again with the syringe, the pressure is off a little bit..
I am glad to hear that Pascal and Yohio are both doing ok now

[Bam]

I’m so glad she takes her medl! Of course she should have a silver spoon =)

That she’s eating hay is of course great. CC is mostly timothy hay, but if she has lost weight she may need the extra nutrients. As I said my bunny LOATHED the CC, but he thrived on it physically. If she’s ordered CC in order for the stomach to better cope with the antibiotics, you could try a probiotic like benebac.

I hope Juniper will be fine soon!

[Megabunny]

That’s so funny. I was going to write in that my breeder friend (who is more pet owner than breeder in the way she treats her rabbits) actually prefers spoon feeding with the hard plastic covered baby spoons than with a syringe, but I won’t go into it because you figured it out. I’m just tickled to see it for the first time (for me anyway) on BB. Great job!!

[MissMary]

The vet recommended .3ml florentreo 2x daily so we’ve been giving her that when I give her her meds at breakfast & dinner time. I took a video of her eating from the spoon, it’s just so cute if I can figure out how to post it to here from my iPhone, I will

[Bam]

That sounds great =)

I hope you figure out how to post the vid, I so want to watch it!

[MissMary]

No luck yet with the video, something keeps going wrong part way through the upload to photobucket, but I will keep trying.
Also, Juniper is back to her old self

[Bam]

I’m so glad to hear it!

I have no idea how to upload a video from an IPhone, when I uploaded a vid of Yohio I put it in my google My Drive first and linked to that, but that was from an android.

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