Feeding medication to Rabbit

[jojo2297]

My American fuzzy lop, Lola, has a fungal inspection (possibly ringworm – the vet didn’t confirm). She gave us the antibiotic, sporonox, and told us to feed it to her orally through a syringe. Yesterday, she accepted it with grace because she didn’t know what it tasted like, but today she wouldn’t take it no matter what! She absolutely abhors getting held, so we can’t lift her out of her pen or hold her down. We tried using the “burrito method” where we wrap her in a towel and feed her the medication, but it failed horribly; she would just jerk backwards and the medication would spill on her fur. Please help!! We don’t know what to do….

[Kirsty]

I am having the same problem with my rabbit. He has to take medication for ringworm and absolutely hates it! He has taken a medication called metacam, which he loved, so it was easy to give it to him, but now I am having trouble with the new stuff.

A good suggestion I have heard is to put something “tasty” on the tip of the syringe so your rabbit will be more likely to take the medication. I am going to put a little bit of natural applesauce on my bunny’s syringe next time to see if that helps. You can also try smearing some banana on it.  Another thing you can do is keep a snack near you for afterwards so your bunny will have something to look forward to. That might help make the experience a little less horrible for her. It might be hard (as I know) to do, but you can try to hold her mouth shut as soon as you can get the medicine in so less will end up all over the place. My bunny kept moving his head and backing away, so quite a bit got all over his fur too and he started frantically cleaning himself…. Next time I hope it will turn out better…

Good luck with your bunny! I am hoping my next attempt with my bunny will go well too.

[litheandgraphic]

I’m wondering if it would also be possible to put a bit of something tasty inside the syringe before the medicine, if that makes sense, so that the rabbit will get a mouthful of tasty and then swallow the yucky stuff. I’ve also heard that mixing the medication with something like applesauce to disguise the taste can help.

[LongEaredLions]

Like the others said, you can suck up a little bit of applesauce or fruit baby food in the syringe, then shake it up a bit and try to feed it to him that way. I have done this before and usually the bunnies will eat it willingly.

[BunnyBrigade]

I make an applesauce with papaya and mix it with the medicine. I notched that the plain applesauce is not enough to mask the flavor of the medicine. So, that’s why I add the papaya.

[Samicles]

You can use their need to be clean to your advantage. I know a lot of cat owners will just put the medicine on the cat’s paw so the cat will lick it off. For my bunny, I’d give him a treat afterwards and pet him in between. I had to give him 0.2mL of Metacam (which he loved) and 0.8mL of Chloramphenciol palmatate. Of course he hated the Chlora which he needed more of. So I’d feed him the Metacam first to get that out of the way then the Chlora I’d let him eat as much as he wanted, when he didn’t want anymore I’d pet him for a little while, then he’d be ready to eat more. And he gets a treat at the end.

[littlemissflip]

I have also had good luck with mixing a small amount of all-natural (no sugars/preservatives added) strawberry-banana juice into the medicine. My bun actually loves most medicine (such a weirdo!), but he didn’t like the fenbendazole he had to take for 6 months when he had E. cuniculi, and occasionally he just turns up his nose.

What I do is syringe the prescribed amount of meds into a small dish, then syringe a small amount of the juice into the dish, mix the two, then syringe the mixture back up and administer to bunny. I try to use the smallest amount of juice possible to make it appetizing to him, but it might take some trial and error to find the “magical” ratio.

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