Rabbits have two stomachs. One is like ours, located between the esphogas and small intestine. Their other stomach, actually their more important stomach, is located at the juncture of the small intestine and the large intestine. This stomach is the cecum. In humans it’s known as the appendix, a vestigal organ for humans. Just as cows regurgitate and chew their cud, rabbits have to do the same, they need to purge their cecum stomach everyday. But rabbits cannot regurgitate their cecum into their mouth directly. The Cecum contents are expelled through their large intestine and out through their rectum. These are called cecotrops, or cecum pellets. Unlike the hard relatively dry odorless bunny poop pellets, the cecum pellets are mushy, mucous covered and if you smash one in your fingers they have a vomit like smell. As soon as a cecum pellet comes out of the bunney’s rectum, it will immediately bend around and eat it. The cecum pellet is nutricious…it contains liver enzymes, vitamins, partially digested food, and also the symbiotic bacteria that transforms cellulose to glucose. You can own a rabbit for years and never know that once, or more, each day one of these mushy things is coming out of their rectum and they are immediately eating it.. Ever see you rabbit appear to be licking or whatever it’s rear end? Actually it’s probably eating it’s cecum pellet.
What goes wrong? If you have a fat rabbit, and it can’t bend around to re-ingest the cecum pellet or if your rabbit has spinal authritus (spinal stenosis) that prevents the rabbit from bending around, the soft pellet will (1) get mushed in the fur around it’s rectum or (2) drop out on the floor or carpet. We had this problem with Bunny. We had to clean her bum and also we would sometimes step on a cecum pellet on the floor and make a stain on the floor. Months of unhappiness. Solution. The Vet diagnosed spinal stenosis and gave us a Metacam prescription…an analgesic. Happiness..with no more back pain, Bunny went back to eating her Cecum pellets.
Our two rabbits now are white Flemish rabbits. They are 8 months old. Their bums are completely clean with white hair. They are obviously eating their cecum pellets daily.
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How to check bunny’s butt. The straightforward way is to pick up the rabbit, turn it upside down and set it in you lap between you legs and have a look at the butt. This is highly stressing to the bunny. They don’t like to be picked up and hate to be turned upside down. The low stress technique is, with the rabbit laying on the floor, gently use one hand to press it’s shoulders down to keep it from running away. Take the other hand and slide it under the rabbits butt and feel if there’s a smooched out cecum pellet in bunn’s hair around it’s rectum or vulva. Don’t feel squemish about this…a cecum is not poop…it’s stomach contents meant to be eaten by the rabbit. For the several months I had to do this, Bunny became very tolerant of this procedure.