I’ve never dealt with sludge personally, but I know Sarita and others have. They should be along soon to give further advice.

I’ve dealt with sludge a good bit. One thing to try is to decrease or completely eliminate pellets. A few months ago I decreased pellets to 1 tablespoon a day for each bun and have seen a pretty dramatic decrease in the frequency and amount of sludge they parse. I also offer veggies with a high water content to help increase water intake.

edit: huh, when I submitted this post, “p a s s” got changed to “parse”.. lol

edit 2: when I go to edit again, all of the “parses” have been changed to “p a s s” in the edit window but when I submit they all still “parse”! Very weird….

HAHHAHHA! I know why your p a s s got changed to parse. There is a swear filter and it changes the three last letters of p a s s to arse. It shouldn’t do that though when it’s attached to the P. What a dumb new filter we have with the update. I”ll have to go back and clarify that!

I know that some bunnies are susceptible regardless of diet, however it wouldn’t hurt to to advise the healthiest diet possible. I know that many times longer haired breeds may need the higher protein so she may be offering another type of feed for that.

I know Sarita has dealt with this, and i will let her know about this thread as well as I will search to see if I can find her responses in past threads to post a link too.

UPDATED:  Okay, so I found a thread that Sarita had started regarding what was going on with her own bunnies. It’s something that may help your friend as well.  https://binkybunny.com/FORUM/tab…fault.aspx  There is some helpful information throughout.

I had also found this response from Dana Krempels regarding sludge http://en.allexperts.com/q/Rabbits-…itis-1.htm   (this is also in the thread that I linked)

I do think that it is not all diet related too but I do think that pellets are a problem (though not all of the problem). My Twizzler still has issues and she does not get any pellets.

Another thing your friend should try is expressing the bladder – the sludge is settling and what you want to do to get it to dispense is to hold the rabbit up so that the sludge goes down to the uretha where the rabbit can pass it. Have your friends ask the vet to show her how to do this – it can take some work and you can be fairly aggressive to express the bladder – it’s a good thing to do a few hours after sub-q fluids when the rabbit is hydrated.

Also it is good to keep the rabbit active – make sure he gets some run time.

I would love to read that article if I can find it – mostly my vets have said it’s not much studied so they don’t know a whole lot about it. I’ve heard on other lists that rabbits with sludge who have had blood work have had low calcium levels in their blood – go figure. I’ve heard increase the calcium consumption (with vegetables). I think hydration is also important.

I don’t think this is a condition that will ever completely go away in a rabbit – they will need constant monitoring for this.

homepage.mac.com/exoticdvm/.Public/vol%206-2.pdf

I’m hoping this link will work to that article that from Dr. Frances Harcourt-Brown for everyone to read.