Upper respiratory infections are a very tough to fight in rabbits. My rabbit George has been treated since February, he is only recently show really good signs.

Did your vet do a culture? You may need to switch the antibiotics as well. With George we had to do multiple changes. I also highly recommend looking in to nebulization with an antibiotic and something like Acetylcsteine (Mucomyst). In rabbit many times they do not get good blood circulation up in there nasal cavity so the oral antibiotics are not always the greatest for getting up in to the nasal cavity. Thus nebulization is helpful, the Mucomyst breaks up the snot and helps it drain as well as letting the antibiotics get into the infected regions.

Just be patient and keep your vet up to date with any changes.

Baytril is often used first since it’s generally considered safe and is a broad spectrum antibiotic. There are other antibiotics that can be used, some for difficult to treat URIs. You can try a different antibiotic or you can have the vet do a culture.

Here’s a link to rabbit safe antibiotics:
http://www.medirabbit.com/Safe_medication/Antibiotics/Safe_antibiotics.htm

Wooly was given Azithromycin at one time.

I agree about the length of time it can take to clear these infections up, if at all. 4 weeks would be a minimum to be on abx in my book. Sometimes, it is a case of life long management unfortunately.

A nebuliser is definitely something worth looking into. Not only for medicating, but also to use just saline to help move all the gunk out of the nose. It’s something that can be done regularly for snuffly rabbits, whether they are on abx or not.
Doing dual abx may be something to talk about with vet also. One injectable, one via nebuliser perhaps.

Ditto on azithromycin. Ive heard that is good for respiratory infections.

Because you did see an improvement on the baytril, it may be that it is effective against the bacteria, just needs longer duration. What can happen is mucous gets trapped in little pockets and bacteria harboured there and abx may not clear it completely. So this starts to build up again. That’s where nebuliser mist and decongested can be useful. Getting this stuff to flow out.

A test of what is the cause of infection could be useful. We had a member here whose rabbit was treated for fungal infection in the nose. Her vet said she sees a bit of that. I only learnt this year that baytril actually can suppress some spore formation. So it’s possible if there was a fungal infection, baytril might actually be helping some, though not completely clearing it up. So a C&S test for bacterial and fungal species may be useful for Sampras.

We’re scheduled to be moving house this month (the 14th) and I dont like the idea of moving hi while he’s still this unwell.

Moving may actually be a positive thing though, if there is an environmental factor contributing to his resp issues.

{{{Sampras}}} Sending some good health vibes out for him.