Thanks Sarita and MooBunnay!

I read this forum before trying to find out whats wrong with him, and i suspected mites too, but i’ve never had to deal with that so I thought I better ask. I just moved to the US from Europe, so pretty much everything is new for him. My husband thought maybe he is allergic to the new food or something.

To his housing: We got him a hatch and run from petsmart, maybe you know that kind. The whole thing is on carpet floor (for some reason he hates anything but carpet…) He gets to run around in the apartment pretty much all the time when we are at home. We have a dog too, that he became good friends with. He doesn’t get to go outside since we don’t have a backyard and there are a  lot of fleas in this area anyway. I’m not sure where he might have gotten mites from, maybe they got in with the dog. Besides this bold patch he is perfectly fine, eats, drinks and poops just how he should.

Thanks again for any input

Edit: The food we give him is called super premium rabbit blend from wild harvest, and he gets timothy hay. Usually he gets a piece of apple or such in the evening, and we get him treats, they are called healthy bites.

My hubby just called the two vets near us, and neither of them treats rabbits. I thought that was kinda odd, but oh well. Because of that, and since we are fairly sure it is mites, we think about treating it ourselves. Does anybody have experiance with this? Or is it a downright bad idea? I would still rather see the vet but going all the way over there and pay a lot just for them to tell us what we already know seems unneccessary too. I read Revolution/Stronghold works well on rabbits, is that correct? I also read about using Lime sulfur dip, but on one website it says it’s not safe for rabbits. Does anybody know?

I’m really not convinced it is a good idea to treat it without a vet, any input would be appreciated!

Thanks again sarita!

In the descriptions of Revolution they mostly talk about fleas, ticks and ear mites, is it for sure effectiv on fur mites as well?

Ok, so we went to the vet on monday. It wasn’t mites after all, he has ringworm. We got a spray to treat it with. Is there anything else i can or should do?

I wasn’t very happy with the vet though. He wasn’t too careful handling my bunny, i could see he was really scared. His eyes were about to pop out of his head  I have problems handling him myself now, he doesn’t want to let me pick him up. I don’t know if it is because of the rough handling at the vet or because he is scared of the spray. But he will "growl" and box  me whenever i want to pick him up. Poor thing, I hope he will get back to normal soon.

Hey you guys. I thought i would give you an update about my bunny. I think it’s getting a little better, but not nearly as fast as i thought it would. Maybe I’m too impatient. He developed a few sore spots with white dead skin on them, mostly on his neck, i think it’s because the spray doesn’t dry all the way there. So I reduced the spraying from two times a day to only one time. I hope this will make things better. We don’t seem to be able to get it under control all the way though, a little part of his head is showing symptoms too now. We cut his hair all around the thing so the spray would get on the skin better, I hope it will stop growing now…

BTW, can any of you tell me what kind of breed my rabbit is? I never managed to find out. Here’s a picture:

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb152/neph_06/DSC02570.jpg

Thanks Sarita! Yes it is very frustrting indeed, if it doesn’t get better soon we will have to go to the vet again I guess, I read online that there is another medication they would give him orally. If so I will choose a different vet though, this last one was horrible.

A lionhead, that might very well be it. I thought about a Jersey Whoolie (spelling?), but i think they are usually brown, not black. Here is another picture, the first one was kinda dark I guess:

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb152/neph_06/DSC02617.jpg

He weighs 6 pounds btw. Not exactly a dwarf like they told me at the petstore…

Thank you gravehearted for all the great info

No, I didn’t check the vets at rabbit.org, I didn’t know about that. I will check it out though if we have to go again! The last one we went to was pretty bad, i would recommend not to go to this one but i guess it’s probably not allowed to give names here.

His back looks better now, but it’s still growing on his head, I don’t know what to do anymore, I probably spray him too much already but it just keeps on growing… And on some spots he still has thick layers of dead skin, I think that’s where I sprayed him too much, if you touch it it feels pretty hard, kinda like armor almost. Maybe he is allergic to the spray, I don’t know. It breaks my heart that he doesn’t seem to get much better. And the spray is running out too…

About the grumpyness, he is fine whenever I touch him or reach into his run or hutch, but when I try to pick him up to spray him he freaks out, one time he even tried to jump out of the roof opening of the hutch cause he was so freaked out. He is neutered already, and 6 years old.

Ok, another update: It’s FINALLY getting a lot better now. We tossed the spray from the vet aside and bought him a topical cream. This works so much better, we could see improvement after 2 days already. His back and ears are mostly good, his head is a little red still but a lot better than before. The dead skin is almost completely gone and everything is healing well. He still needs to grow a lot of fur back (his back and head are halfway bold), but aside from that he is doing great. He is a lot more active and eats better. While we used the spray his appetite was at minimum. I would post a picture of his improvement but he looks really bad all bold like that, and I don’t want to scare you guys

Whew, so glad he is better

No, the vet didn’t recommend this cream. But I wouldn’t have counted on his recommendations anyway after he gave us that totally useless spray… After the spray didn’t work we did some more online research and found that creams with the active ingredient Clotrimazole or Miconazole are supposedly safe to use on rabbits. I checked all the lists I could find online that list medications and such that are dangerous for rabbits for the inactive ingredients, didn’t find any of them on those lists, overall they seemed safe also. It’s just a simple antifungul cream we got from Walmart. After I put it on him I make him stay on top of his hutch for a while to give the cream time to get absorbed by the skin and to keep him from licking it off. He is not happy about that arrangement but it works pretty well. After that i give him a couple of treats to keep him busy and reward him a little. He likes that part…

By the way, does any of you know a good rabbit vet in the Savannah GA area? The closest I found on the rabbit.org list are all in Atlanta, that would be too far for us to drive. Aside from the vet we already went to there is one more vet we know of that treats rabbits near us, but I don’t know if they are any good.

Thanks to you all for your support and help

Well it’s me again…

It turned out that we didn’t beat the ringworm after all, it still kept on growing and we went to the vet again today (a different vet though), and SURPRISE, it’s not ringworm. It is furmites like we suspected from the beginning. So the poor guy has been having them for almost 3 months now, having me put cream on him every day for nothing just because our first vet was obviously an idiot. He made a culture to make sure it’s ringworm (at least he said he would…) and would call us back if it turned out to be something else. We never heared from him again, so either he didn’t do the culture he charged us 30 dollars for, or he didn’t bother telling us it was mites. By now the mites became so many that he has to be treated with ivermectin. The vet said it is lethal to rabbits if given in too big dosages, so of course I am very worried for him now. He got a very little dose though, so I hope he will be ok. He will have to get the treatment again in two weeks, and again in another two weeks after that. Also the vet said we might have to do a biopsy because he found a large amount of cells on the rabbits skin that aren’t supposed to be there. I hope it won’t turn out to be something serious

Thank you graveheartedd and babybunsmum!

Our current vets is great I think, he is very nice and listened to everything we told him, not like the other vet, he didn’t even care what we said. Like you said, god-complex… Our new vet, Dr. Bink(y!!!), didn’t even charge us for the ivermectin or the skin scrape, we only payed 28 dollars for the visit and physical. That’s a big difference to the other vet, we payed 100 dollars there. Without getting any benefit from it of course. The staff is very friendly too, all in all a good choice I think  Now I hope he can help our little guy. Today he doesn’t seem to be feeling sick or anything from the medicine, so that’s a good sign.

Dr. Bink also said 50% of their patients are exotics, so I assume he has a good bit of experiance with them.

So, as promised, a couple of pictures since he got a little of his fur back:

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb152/neph_06/DSC02708.jpg

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb152/neph_06/DSC02710.jpg

Look at that belly mohawk…

He’s still doing great, even though he is not quite back to his furry self yet.

(Hubby saus he looks like he got a poodle haircut, legs furry and everything else short)

Ok so we went to the vet again today. So far so good, he said it looks a lot better, there are still some adult mites there but not as many, so that’s an improvement. He expected all the adults to be dead after the first treatment, so if the current dosage doesn’t work well enough he is gonna start using a bigger dose. We asked him about a little bald spot that isn’t growing any hair back yet, and he said, and this is interesting, that rabbits are one of very few species that may stop growing fur if the hair follicels are "disturbed" too  much, like for example interrupted in their growth by fur mites. He told us you can see that often in females that lick a lot on their dewlap, after a while there won’t grow any fur anymore. I didn’t know that, did any of you?

Our little one was a bit mad at us after we got home from the vet, but now I think he has forgiven us

(It’s funny how well behaved he is at the vets, but at home, that’s a whole different story…)

Ok, this is the last time i dig this thread up, I promise!

Just wanted to let you know that our bunny finally  got rid of the mites now. We went to the vet on monday and he said he looks fabulous. He didn’t even have to give him a third dose of ivermectin. The bunny feels great and turned back into the troublemaker he usually is. As i was typing this he just peed on the floor… right where we had a few cardboxes sitting that he likes to chew on, I just moved them away a minute ago. I guess he didn’t approve of that…