Disinfecting bunny area?

[mehrsee]

Hi everyone! This is my first post, and I haven’t been on a forum in a long time, so please bear with me as I figure out my way around.

My service bunny Nyx passed away on Sunday, from what I expect to be a virus. She was about 2 years old. I can post her symptoms if anyone is interested, but mostly I’m here to ask about disinfecting. I’m cleaning her things in the dishwasher or with bleach if applicable, but I’m worried about my family members and other pets. She was well socialized with our cats and every person in the household, and I understand that some sicknesses can be passed to bunnies between other animals or humans. How do I prevent the virus from getting passed to a bunny I will adopt in the future? I will say that we don’t know specifically what got her sick in the first place, but I want to take every precaution possible.

Thanks so much in advance!

[Bam]

I’m sorry that you lost Nyx.

I think bleach will do fine as a disinfectant. Chlorine bleach degrades DNA and viruses have DNA, they can’t function without it.
If bleach is too strong (if you have other small pets and/or small children) there is a rabbit-safe disinfectant that’s used in horse-stables, called Virkon-S. It’s available in small sachets for use in hutches and cages. It kills lots of pathogens. It has no smell and it doesn’t bleach surfaces. I think it’s available where you buy stuff for horses like feed-stores and such, or you can get online. If you order online, just make sure you get the small pack, it’s sold in big buckets as well and since you probably don’t have a whole stable, you’ll only need a little bit.

I don’t know of any viruses that would affect rabbits as well as humans. If there are any, they are very rare. There are some bacterial infections that can affect guinea pigs as well as rabbits. Chlorine bleach kills bacteria too.

Some viruses really can survive for a long time without a living host, but the one I’m thinking of, rabbit hemorragic disease, RHD, is very rare in North America. In Europe and Australia there’s a vaccine against it. If you are in Europe our Australia, it’s a good idea to vaccinate against this virus. I’m in Europe so my buns get this vaccine yearly.

If you feel you can write a little bit about what symptoms your bun had (I realize this would be painful for you) maybe our members can try and make some guesses as to what it might have been that took her. It might be something our members have heard of before or have experienced.

[mehrsee]

Thank you for your advice. Last November, Nyx came down with the snuffles after a wellness checkup at our ex-vet. The vet never had any cultures done, but she prescribed tobramycin eye drops and oral injections of sulfameth/trimeth every twelve hours for two weeks. The snuffles were persistent, but by the end of the two weeks she was totally fine.

Then, out of the blue on Saturday morning (the 23rd), Nyx was having a really hard time breathing. She had white discharge from her eyes and nose, and a lot of it. She had been perfectly fine the night before, although a little more tired than usual. Thankfully I was able to get her into a vet we hadn’t seen before that day. The vet didn’t do a full exam (no temperature or swabs or anything), just prescribed an oral injection of enrofloxacin every twelve hours. Nyx stayed pretty stable all day, she even munched on some greens. I gave her the first dose of medicine that night before settling down, and she took it well. By midnight my gut was telling me that something was wrong, and she very suddenly started frantically putting her head down on her soft toys, to try to extend her neck. I was sitting with her at this point, trying to soothe her. She began to try to hop around, but her head was rolling up towards the ceiling, and she couldn’t move her legs. This only lasted an hour before she seized two or three times, and then it was over.

I hope that sheds some light on what might have killed her. I’ve gone through it a thousand times in my head, and I’ve done some googling, but I haven’t found anything. As a side note, do the descriptions of the vets above sound appropriate? I find it odd now that the second vet didn’t even take a temperature. We don’t have many choices for exotic vets in my area and I’d like to settle on one before welcoming another bunny into the household.

[Bam]

I’m very sorry, again. To me, this sounds like a bacterial infection. The white discharge, the progression into head tilt is consistent with this. It is often caused by a bacteria called pasteurella (the same bacteria that is often the cause of snuffles), that rabbits can carry all their lives and not get sick from, but some buns do get sick. The treatment she got (enrofloxacine) was the appropriate one for this illness. In cases like these, you want to start treatment asap, you can’t wait for the results of a culture. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to fight off the infection, and that is tragically something that does happen.

Another cause of head tilt and paralysis is a parasite called e cuniculi that affects the nervous tissue in the body. But that doesn’t give the bunny a white discharge, so I’m thinking an upper respiratory infection that progressed into the middle/inner ear via the eustachian tube that connects the mouth/nose and the ears, possibly then spreading to other parts of the nervous system, causing paralysis, then death.

A good scrubbing with bleach or other house hold products like white vinegar (don’t mix vinegar directly with bleach though!), maschine washing of blankies/ towels etc that Nyx had and washing her cage and food-bowls and things with hot water and soap will imo be quite sufficient. If it was pasteurella, as I mentioned before, it’s a bacteria that more or less all buns carry, and it’s not known why it causes sickness in some buns but not in the majority of buns.

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