I’m so sorry for your loss, how horrible. 🙁

Are you in an area with RHDV2? This sounds very much like it could be Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease (RHDV2), with all of them dying so quickly and close together. The virus has been spreading quickly throughout North America since early 2020, and can be tracked in on shoes, brought in by insects, and even transmitted through feed. It typically causes at least 90% mortality and often the only symptom is sudden death. 🙁

You can read more about it here: https://binkybunny.com/forums/topic/please-read-rabbit-hemorrhagic-disease-rhdv2-outbreak-in-north-america/

I agree you should not bring any more rabbits into the home until the cause is identified. I don’t think mold would cause rapid death like you observed, but in general something should be done to prevent the moisture, because constant humidity can cause respiratory problems in buns. I imagine you want to figure this out as well to make sure nothing is harming your daughter!

How long ago was the garage converted? I wonder if there could have been a chemical in the garage that lingered?

Since you are in Texas (which has confirmed cases), I wouldn’t rule out RHDV. It tends to spread in the spring when insects start to become active.

If it’s not too late, your vet can have them tested for it…

There is a vaccine for the virus. The safest thing would be to have any new rabbit vaccinated before you bring them home. Annoyingly it takes about 4 weeks for immunity (if memory serves) because it’s a two shot regimen.

Just to clarify, did you have all of these rabbits at the same time, or were they sequential? How far apart were their deaths?

To my knowledge, an environmental toxin building up would show symptoms before it got serious enough to cause death, it would not be a sudden death with no other symptoms, unless it was something acute. Maybe carbon monoxide??? A pesticide??  I really don’t know.

Also, can you fill out this health template, just to make sure there’s not anything else that could be going on:

Please copy and paste the template below into your own thread and fill in the info. 

If your bunny has not eaten or pooped in 12 hours, this is an emergency. Call a vet immediately!

The answers provided in this forum are for general guideline purposes only. The information is not intended to diagnose or treat your pet. Seek the advice of your veterinarian or a qualified behaviorist.

Maintenance and Housing
Is your bunny housed indoors or outdoors?
Does your bunny live with other bunnies?
If yes, are they bonded?
If you rabbit spends time outside, are wild rabbits around?
How much exercise does your bunny get per day?
How often do you clean the litter box?
How often do you groom your bunny?

Spay/Neuter
Is your bunny spayed/neutered?
If so, for how long?
If not, why not?
Are you aware of reproductive cancer risk in females? If not, please read about it here.

Pooping and Diet – Very Important
What does your bunny eat normally:
How much hay and what type?
How much pellets and what type?
How much veggies and what types?
How many treats and what types?
Anything else not listed?
When was the last time your bunny ate? (If > 12 hours ago this is an emergency, contact a vet ASAP)
What was the last thing your bunny ate?
When was the last time your bunny pooped? (If > 12 hours ago this is an emergency, contact a vet ASAP)
How did your bunny’s most recent poops look (round and firm, misshapen, small and hard, soft/mushy, runny, etc.) ?

Illness & Symptoms
How long have you had this bunny?
In a few words, can you explain the symptoms?
How long ago did you first notice these symptoms?
Have you consulted a vet?
Have you started any treatment for the symptoms?
Was your bunny physically ill or injured when you got them?
How has its behavior and appearance changed, if at all?

I agree with Dana. I would not rule out RHDV2. There may not have been any reported cases recently, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still spreading in wild rabbit populations. Often the rabbits die and are either inside a “burrow” (cottontails don’t actually burrow) or a scavenger finds them and eats them right away.

Blood coming from the mouth, etc. isn’t always present in RHDV2 cases. The bunny will just die very suddenly and there won’t be any outward signs.

As for potential toxins, I think you would have noticed symptoms developing before the bunnies died. Unless it was something very acute… but then you would worry about whatever it was (carbon monoxide, fumes, etc.) harming your daughter.

I too would not rule out RVHD, especially since your vet suspected sth wrong with the liver. In the early days, when little was known about the RVHD virus, the disease was called “rabbit hepatitis”, because in autopsies of dead wild rabbits, they found abnormal changes to the liver. In any case, it’d be wise to vaccinate any new rabbits.

I don’t know if paint containing lead could’ve been used to paint a garage floor, but if you suspect anything like it’d probably be good to scrape off some paint flakes and tro to have them analysed, primarily for your daughter’s sake, since she’s living in the room.

RHDV is my first thought too. It can stay present in the environment for a very long time and there are commonly no symptoms or very limited symptoms for a very short time before death. Beyond that some sort of environmental toxin is a very likely candidate. Ideally one of their livers should have been sent away for testing for RHDV, but I imagine that’s possibly too late now.

Aside from the paint on the floor, and the possible wall issues, what sort of set up does your daughter have for the rabbits? What sort of bedding, litter, toys, food bowls etc. How long did you have each of the rabbits before they started showing symptoms?

I’m very sorry to hear that this is happening, it must be very tough on your daughter.

Not to pile on, but I also think I remember that some states stopped routinely testing suspected RHDV cases once it was confirmed in the state. Basically the testing was aimed at initial detection, not ongoing monitoring.

Hi everyone, this is the daughter. Thank you everyone for your input and for your condolences. This has been a very rough time for us.

I want to add some information and clear up the timeline a bit.

Fleur was the first rabbit that I got (October 2020), and she was the first rabbit to pass away. She died last October. She seemed to have a lot of things going on, including a heart murmur/enlarged heart and what appeared on radiographs to be a potential bladder stone. She presented with sudden lethargy, a fever, and reduced appetite (although she did nibble at food even when she was clearly not feeling good). Blood work showed high liver enzymes. She was dribbling urine at the vet, although this was not something I noticed at home, and blood was found in her urine. We didn’t have an autopsy done or samples sent to pathology.

Bonnie was the second rabbit that I got (January 2021), and was the second rabbit to pass away. She died last January. Unfortunately, we were a little slower at getting Bonnie to the vet than Fleur, because Gandalf had had some mild tummy trouble just a few days prior, and I thought she was dealing with the same thing at first. She presented with lethargy and reduced appetite, eventually refusing food altogether. Unlike Fleur, she did not have a fever. The vet said that her temperature was very low and they weren’t able to raise it, even with heat support. However, she also showed extremely high liver enzymes, she was dribbling urine, and there was blood in her urine as well. No major findings on radiographs IIRC. We did have an autopsy done at the exotic specialist in the same complex as the emergency vet, and the vet noted free blood in the abdomen and a very unhappy-looking liver, although there wasn’t an active twist. Samples were sent out, and pathology found nothing but dead tissue and bruising. I do believe RHDV was tested for, but I just sent an email her way to double-check.

Gandalf was the last rabbit that I got (November 2021, about a month after losing Fleur) and he passed away at home a couple of days ago. Like the other two, he presented with sudden lethargy and reduced appetite, but we were unable to get him to the vet so no blood work or radiographs were done prior to his passing. We’re waiting to hear back from our regular vet.

All three rabbits seemed to be in good shape before all of this, although I know rabbits tend to hide illness. They all declined very rapidly, going from looking kind of “off” to dying in just a few hours. They were housed in adjacent pens with regular “dates,” since I wanted to bond them (I didn’t end up being successful since these were my first rabbits plus some outside factors, but that’s not relevant at this time).

Thank you for the added information! Do keep us posted on what the vet says!

And again, so sorry for your losses. So sad 🙁

Thank you for the addition information. That really helps.

What about high concentrations of phenolic compounds? Or even essential oils?

So far the vet hasn’t found anything either :(. This is so frustrating.

I don’t use any essential oils. There’s nothing like incense, essential oils, candles, etc for scents in this room, and I use vinegar and water to clean around the bunny stuff. I do use a store bought disinfectant spray along the wall where we have that water leak, and I do have an enzyme cleaner for the cat, but those are only used on that side of the room. I don’t know anything about phenolic compounds, and Google has not been helpful in making that clear. What materials should I be looking for?

Phenolic compounds can be found in a varity of plants. They’re plant “poisons”- beneficial in small or moderate amounts, but potentially toxic over time if fed in considerable amounts. Many of these plants are highly beneficial in moderate amounts.

A very low temp “just” means the rabbit has gone into medical chock, which is only in rare cases possible to reverse. Chock will lead to death unless swiftly  reversed.

Elevated liver enzymes (“liver values”) is also a frequent finding in rabbits with GI stasis. It’s reversible if caught early. The rabbit liver is very sensitive to “starvation” -and rabbits starve very soon if they stop eating. Their body starts breaking down body fat for energy and sends this fat to the liver, and the liver gets overwhelmed. I had a rabbit that came in with markedly elevated liver enzymes, but they normalized over the next few days when he was syringe fed Critical Care and motility drugs.

Were all three rabbits getting hay from the same batch?

Rabbits are sensitive to phenols and phenolic compounds. Their livers cannot process them properly. As Bam said, they are found in plants. They can be toxic if ingested in large amounts (e.g. oak leaves). Some can also take on a gaseous form and can become toxic if inhaled in concentrated amounts over a long period of time (e.g. cedar oils found in cedar shavings). Typically, this isn’t something you associate with sudden death. More likely, the effects become evident when the rabbit dies during surgery or another procedure that requires anesthesia.

I see. We don’t use cedar or wood bedding. The litter they have is pelleted paper, and we just used fleece blankets for Bonnie and Fleur’s bedding, cardboard for Gandalf because he was a chewer.

Would the kind of greens I’ve been feeding be an issue? I usually fed cilantro since it’s cheap and as far as I read it sounded safe, but I’ve also rotated out collard greens, parsley, basil, spinach, and mint to mix things up.

We did not have Gandalf and Fleur at the same time, and bought new packages of food and hay in the time between Fleur’s passing and adopting Gandalf. We’ve used the same brands, however.

This might be a stupid question, but would it still be GI stasis if they are still nibbling at food, just without the enthusiasm that they normally would? All three rabbits were still nibbling at food and taking treats before they died, just not as much and not with as much gusto as normal. Gandalf was nibbling at his hay just a couple of hours before.

I can see how Bonnie was in shock. She deteriorated so much overnight, and was unresponsive by the time we got to the emergency vet at a bit after 5:00 that morning. I mentioned in my earlier comment that it turns out that she had quite a bit of internal bleeding, but nobody knew about that until the autopsy. Because the expenses have been absolutely killing us, we weren’t able to do an autopsy on all three rabbits and so aren’t sure if Gandalf and Fleur were the same way.

Greens would not be the problem. I was wondering about the hay because it is possible that hay could contain the odd toxic plant. It wouldn’t matter with big animals like horses, and rabbits tend to pick and choose between the individual pieces when they eat hay, so the risk would be slight, but still I thought I’d ask.

It doesnt seem likely that a bun should start bleeding internally due to something it ingested or breathed in.

GI stasis is often a process where the bun eats and poops less and less, but most rabbit health problems will first present as inappetence and smaller poops, and we call that GI stasis.  It’s more a symptom of something else than an illness in itself. It must be treated, it’s acutely life threatening, but the root of the problem often lies elsewhere.

Rabbit autopsies are often inconclusive. I’ve never had a rabbit autopsied. I think its good if its not too expensive, but in many places it’s crazy expensive.

While not conclusive, internal bleeding is another symptom of RHDV, the H stands for haemorrhagic, they literally bleed to death. There are other causes of course but it is concerning.

On the chance it is RHDV, I think it can survive in the environment for several months. Though I would have to double check the exact figure. In which case even with thorough cleaning, it might be prudent to wait beyond the survival time of the virus before bringing home another rabbit. Just in case.

It would also be prudent to have any rabbit you bring home vaccinated straight away, usually I suggest showing a rabbit to settle in for 2 weeks before the stress of a vet visit but an immediate vaccination could benefit, although they do not usually have immunity for some weeks after.

We did send off samples of Bonnie’s liver to a pathologist because it looked really unhealthy according to the exotics specialist. AFAIK, they did not find RHDV or anything else of note in testing, just a lot of really bruised and necrotic tissue. She’s really convinced that it was a LLT. I’m certainly no vet and obviously very new to rabbits, so I don’t have the knowledge to argue with it. It’s just so weird though. There’s always the possibility that their deaths were not connected, rabbits can be kind of fragile after all, but they’re not THAT fragile.

Nonetheless, we’re doing a deep cleaning of the rabbit area and the rabbit items. Even if RHDV isn’t the problem, the worst thing I get from that is a clean room and clean bunny stuff. What kind of disinfectant would you recommend for that?

I’ll ask my vet if the vaccine is available from them. I can bring it up to the breeder as well. She’s still holding the baby for a few more weeks.

As an aside, what kind of flooring to y’all recommend for a rabbit enclosure? I did put fleece blankets down for Bonnie and Fleur (although they always tended to bunch those up in the corner–I guess they liked to lay down on the cool concrete) and I had cardboard set out for Gandalf because he chewed the blankets.

Ugh, I’m sorry you haven’t found any answers. 🙁

It is true that sometimes you just end up with a string of bad luck, but I do think assuming RHDV with your cleaning procedures would be a good move.

Here is some guidance on disinfecting and cleaning: https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/downloads/rhdv-cleaning-guidance.pdf

Here’s a bit more info on disinfectants: https://co4h.colostate.edu/resources/RHD-Cleaning-Disinfection.pdf

Remember that with bleach and other disinfectants, and organic material inactivates it, so you have to clean the debris first, and then disinfect.

They also mention a 90 day “fallow” period, which I think is a good move, just to be on the safe side.