Dental issues

[Yilina]

Hi guys!
Our pet bunny, Tambor, is now 6 years old -and he has a lovely life thanks to all the advice we got from this community when we go him! <3

A month ago, we took him to the vet because he wasn’t eating his hay. He also had a long term over-tearing/watering eye issue (the vet had thought it wasn’t a big deal and had given us drops which didn’t do anything).

• The vet put him under anesthesia and it turns out that Tambor has been loosing his molars: 4 are missing and 1 the vet had to take out during the anesthesia because it was half broken.
• According to the vet, his eyes watering issues are because the broken/missing upper teeth injured his tears channels
• His nonmissing molars were overgrown because of the missing upper tooth and now we need to take him to the vet every 3 months to have them trimmed.
• He’s still not eating hay and some of the fur on his left ear (the same side that has eye problems) is matted.

Do you guys know why his teeth could be falling/getting broken like that? The vet believes it’s because he has been chewing on his cage bars but Tambor is a free range bunny and he is only in a cage when we have to take him to the vet or goes to the sitter house (once a year -and he hardly chews on them!). It doesn’t make sense, is there anything else that you believe could be causing this? 5 tooth are a lot and I fear it may be something else…

Thank you!

[DanaNM]

Aww that’s so stressful. Chewing the cage bars would not cause molars to fall out like that! Even if a tooth is broken from something, a healthy tooth would grow back.

I had a bunny (Moose) who’s molars kept cracking and rotting. He ended up with an abscess because of it, so be sure to check Tambor for abscesses. Sometimes they can form in the upper jaw and push on the sinuses, causing eye issues.

My extremely rabbit savvy vet’s explanation was that some bunnies just have “Icky teeth”, meaning it was a congenital issue. Moose was only a year or 2 old at the time.

I don’t want to alarm you, but Moose passed away suddenly a few months after his dental issues were detected, and autopsy couldn’t find a cause. Since this is a sudden change with Tambor, you may want to do some blood work and x-rays just to make sure there isn’t something else going on. Scary things like bone cancer can manifest in the jaw, and my personal theory is that maybe Moose had bone cancer (but I really have no evidence for this other than the symptoms). But it’s also very likely he just had some genetic problems.

I also know of some bunnies who lost a few molars, but then their teeth stabilized after a few trimmings and things were fine. So it’s not all scary scenarios!

These things get into the cutting edge of rabbit medicine, so if your vet isn’t super rabbit savvy, a second opinion from a specialist would be a good idea.

 

. . . The answers provided in this discussion 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.  

[LBJ10]

I will echo Dana. It’s very possible that this is a genetic condition. Teeth are normally not that brittle, so something else has to be going on. It could be a problem with how his body processes calcium. And yes, sometimes the remaining teeth do stabilize. They can move within the jaw to “fill” the gap and become more aligned with each other.

[Yilina]

Thank you so much, I’m sure you guys hear it all the time, but you truly are life-savers <3.

I’d like to ask you a couple of things :):
– The vet did a x-ray on Tambor, if there were abscesses, the x-ray would have shown them, right?
– The x-ray showed 4 missing molars. There was no sign of new ones growing and the vet didn’t mention anything about them possibly growing back, is this normal or should they always grow back?
– As for his eye issues (watering), Tambor has been having them since he was 2 (coming and going, but steadily getting worse). We’d him checked for this multiple times, but I’m not sure if they did x-rays (he has had x-rays done for other things, though, and we found out he has spondylosis). The vet believes that, when the missing teeth fell/broke, they injured his jaw. Then, when the body healed it, the eye watering channel was blocked/damaged. I’m not sure if I’m explaining it well, does this make sense?

I’ll take him to the vet for blood work, I want to keep on giving him the best possible life I can. Unfortunately, I’m stuck with this vet – she’s the most rabbit-savvy vet in my island and the island/countries around are in a worse situation 🙁

[LBJ10]

Abscesses do typically show up on x-rays, but they don’t always show up very well. Vets will often try to get x-rays from different views to help identify abscesses and whether or not infection is spreading (i.e. to the bone).

If a healthy tooth is simply broken off at the gum line, it will typically grow back because the root is still there. Rabbit teeth grow continuously, so regrowing a broken off tooth comes naturally. However, if a tooth is removed completely (root and all) then it will not grow back. This is what is supposed to happen when diseased teeth are extracted by a vet.

As for his eyes, it is possible that something was damaged when the teeth were extracted. Or the diseased teeth caused the damage themselves by invading the eye space. It is actually quite common for a rabbit with dental issues to have tooth roots growing into the sinuses and eye cavities.

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