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My 2-year-old female rabbit Skye has gone into gut stasis for the second time in 2 weeks. She has never had any health issues for the past 2 years, she is usually a really happy rabbit. She lives in a puppy cage in our lounge and has lots of time outside of the cage, a constant diet of hay and water, fresh litter every morning and evening – we don’t tend to give her much veg as her droppings never show any hay fibres when we do so we just stick to hay.
6 weeks ago she completely stopped eating and her stomach was rock hard, so I rushed her to the vets. She went to 2 vets before the third treated her properly – after 9 days she was home and recovered after a further 5 days of medication. Since then she’s been fine, eating more than normal and passing normal droppings. However, this week I switched from feeding her timothy hay to <g class="gr_ gr_1829 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Grammar only-ins doubleReplace replaceWithoutSep" id="1829" data-gr-id="1829">meadow</g>, as I noticed her droppings were very dark so thought it would be best to change the hay type. Her droppings were fine at first and she was eating the hay, but two days ago I noticed she wasn't eating much so I supplemented her hay with some recovery paste just to encourage her to eat. I also went and bought the Excel dandelion and chamomile timothy hay - which she was eating a lot of at first but I came home last night to find her hunched over. Her little was clean despite it being changed 8 hours ago, and she wouldn't have any treats or recovery paste which she usually fights me for as she loves the taste of it. </p>
I immediately rang the vets and rushed her there, where she’s been admitted for gut stasis again. The previous time she was admitted, she had no gut sounds at all, but this time she had some – they were just quieter than normal so it looks like we’ve caught it early. However, it’s put me in a difficult situation. I feel like I’ve done something wrong? I keep blaming myself for switching to plain meadow hay rather than the
timothy she likes – I feel like if I wouldn’t have done this, she would be fine. This is the second time in 6 weeks and I’m not sure what to do, because I don’t want it to happen again in 6 weeks and have to put her through all of this again
Has anyone got a similar experience to this – 2 incidents of gut stasis in close succession? The vets don’t think there’s an underlying condition as her teeth are perfect and the blood tests and ultrasounds have all come back normal… Any advice would be appreciated as I don’t want to do the wrong thing and keep her suffering – I want to give her the best life she can have.
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Asriel and Bombur, thank you for your reply. We picked her up from the vets this evening and she seems to be doing a lot better – it was caught really early so fingers crossed she should recover on the medication at home and just hopefully this will be the last incident for a while. Sorry if that didn’t make sense, what I meant was Skye’s droppings become very dense when she has veggies in her diet. Her droppings crumble but there’s not really any visible hay particles in it – more just a brown mass rather than dropping with hay in it. I didn’t know mint could help with gas but it’s one of her favourite herbs so I will buy some ASAP! thank you
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