Messiest Soft Poop Bunny Ever

[Neverhood]

Have a serious problem with our bunny. He is a Lionhead about 2 years old. For the past 1.5 years he has been an absolute mess. Its not like super watery diarrhea but its soft poop in huge clumps. We wake up every day to mounds of it and have to clean it up, it mostly only happens at night, like we clean it up every morning and all day the cage is ok then the next morning we wake up and its a disaster again. He has a lot of fur so he has the messiest butt ever, we don’t have the time to shave and clean his butt everyday. We have a vet and they always did cultures and never found anything then randomly the last visit they tested and are like he has E. Coli…..he’s been doing this for 1.5 years and he’s been tested by you many times before but all of a sudden he has E Coli? Didn’t make sense to us but we gave him the medicine for two weeks to fix it and as we expected, nothing changed. That was about a month ago. He is a very skittish bunny he doesn’t really like to be touched or like people, we have 1 other bunny and he loves us, loves to be pet, loves people etc, they are like polar opposites but thats besides the point. So basically he is the messiest bunny ever….we are having a baby due in October and we pretty much know we can’t keep up with both bunnies and a baby and we also know we do not want this mess around a newborn baby so we are going to find him a new home, although it doesn’t sound like we love him, we do, we’ve had him since he was like a month old. Basically who is going to want a bunny like this? We want to find him a good home with an experienced rabbit owner, that might be hard to do but seriously who is going to get him and see how messed up his stomach is and want to keep him? We want to make this right so he can find a good home that will keep him but we have no clue what to do from here, has anyone ever had a bunny like this? And do this for as long as he has been? His diet is just hay and pellets etc all the right stuff not a ton of carrots or anything like that. We have tried completely changing his diet before and nothing worked. Please help our vet is experienced with bunnies but they are clueless with this problem.

[Beka27]

There’s something called cow pile syndrome. A couple of our members believed their buns had that. Have you heard of that? I wonder if that may be the issue here? I’m not very familiar with it, gonna do some research.

[Beka27]

http://www.allexperts.com/user.cgi?m=6&catID=703&expID=35789&qID=4834527

Here is an answer from rabbit expert, Dana Krempels, to a woman who used to be a forum leader on our site.

This may not be it at all, and you may have already explored this condition with your vet. Just a thought.

[Neverhood]

Thanks for the response, I checked those out and looked at the pictures of that syndrome and our bunnies poop is nothing like it. I’m talking mounds of poops, its like the grape poop clusters but huge and don’t look like grapes its just a big pile of mush

[Beka27]

What kind of dietary changes have you tried, and with what results? Have you tried eliminating pellets completely in favor of an all hay and veggie diet?

So it seems like excessive cecal production, but more watery?

[bunnluff]

I’ve recommended this to several people on here whose bunnies have had really mushy poop. My Pippin had like the mushiest, smeary poop for a while and it was on and off. Her cage was always a disaster and it was really frustrating. I traced it back to her system being thrown off by antibiotics. I did a couple of eliminations like giving less greens for a while and I think the most important factor was that I added in a probiotic daily to her food. She has not had mushy poo since, with the exception of a few overproductions of cecals. It’s definitely worth looking into. I myself have digestive troubles and probiotics have been vital to my well being.

[Neverhood]

Ok I will look into the probiotics. Also when I say diet changes I mean he’s always been on pellets hay and water but he used to get snacks but we completely took him off snacks and nothing changed etc

[Beka27]

Do they get any veggies? They should each be getting about 2 cups of leafy green veggies per day, unlimited grass hay (not alfalfa), and only about 1/8-1/4 cup of pellets per day. Those are the recommendations from the House Rabbit Society. I’d recommend you start moving them both towards fresher diets. This may resolve some or all of his issues.

[Neverhood]

Yes they get veggies. The other bunny has no stomach problems whatsoever and never has. But they do probably get too many pellets a day

[Beka27]

Ok, thanks for the clarification! You had only mentioned hay and pellets. Yeah, I think that would probably be good to reduce the pellets way down for your rabbit with the poop issue. It may not fully solve the problem but maybe it will make it more manageable? I do hope you can get this figured out. It would be a shame to have to give him up. Is he bonded to your other bunny?

[Megabunny]

Everyone’s gotta be tired of hearing about my bunny’s stomach trouble. When I got her in October, the owner had her wrapped in a towel and handed her over to me and that was that. Not that I would’ve given her back, and I was warned she was messy, but bleh! She had such mats on her I couldn’t find her tail and she was a poopy stained mess. After getting her clipped at the vet and daily bathing, she continued to have problems and I finally got really serious about fixing this problem by Christmas. People here have been GREAT at ideas as well as encouraging me that there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
First thing is, like Beka said, consider getting her completely off pellets, but you may have to do it slowly if she doesn’t eat a lot of hay. My bunny has never been totally off pellets and maybe that’s why it’s been a longer process, but she began dropping weight, and she was already underweight, so I’ve been walking a fine line.
Gracie now gets just occasional cilantro or parsley, but other than that, NO fresh greens. Carrots seem to really set her off as well as too many pellets. I’d read it could take 3 months, but Bam on BB warned me it could take 6. She and others have helped me learn to dry food, as the dry stuff seems to be a lot better on their stomachs. Dried Kale…yummy for a bunny!
I cannot imagine keeping up with a rabbit with this problem when you have a baby. I’d get really serious now about getting her to eat as much hay as possible and nothing else, or just bits of pellets. There are also Timothy treats w/ apple and carrot (OK, my Gracie gets a little dried carrot in those), barley treats, a variety of dry hay. If she has this condition that requires mostly hay diet, you should see an improvement, but not right away so don’t get discouraged. Just be sure she’s eating. I actually just bought a digital scale to monitor my little girl’s weight better. I see a lot of similarities in what my bun has been doing and what I’m hearing yours doing. This isn’t a problem you should just consider is a lifetime thing for your bunny. She can’t be enjoying it either.
Again, I don’t know what she has medically, but if it is what mine has, HAY HAY HAY I’m just seeing an improvement in that last couple of weeks. I like that probiotic idea, but haven’t tried it. And buy a bag of Kale and dry it in the oven. It stinks like crazy, but the bunnies love it, and again, I think the more dried food you get into her, and the less fresh food, the better you may find that tummy feeling. I admit she’s the only bunny I’ve worked with that has this condition, so who knows what will work for yours, but I think the mostly hay diet is a good starting point.

[Neverhood]

Nope they are not bonded they are in separate pens/cages. What kind of greens do you suggest? Cilantro tore his stomach up, anything drier you recommend? Also what type of hay? We use timothy hay but lately the brand we get has been really grassy and they don’t eat the grass they just eat the really stiff/thick pieces and the cat tails. So any brands/specific kinds you recommend that aren’t super hard to get a hold of?

[Megabunny]

Hmmmm. Hope I’m not leading you down the wrong path diet-wise, but I wonder if no greens at all for awhile would be the thing to do. Just hay. Nothing else, though like I said, I can’t do this with mine because she starves herself.
OAT HAY is sold at pet stores and that is very stalky. FIRST CUT HAYS are also very stalky, though I’ve been told don’t have the nutrition. I don’t typically see that in stores, except I saw it at a Tractor supply once and another time I got it from someone with horses.
I think anything dried might be OK too, though I guess I wouldn’t suggest the cilantro again. So maybe just the hay for now? I only know what worked for mine. I also wonder what that probiotic is that bunn luff suggested above???

[Neverhood]

Thanks for the help, and yes I’d like to know a probiotic as well

[bunnluff]

I would also recommend that whichever greens you do give, to rotate them. Pippin did badly with too much kale and spinach, but romaine and parsley and chard and mustard greens are okay for her tummy. Also I get powdered Bene-Bac probiotics for small animals at Petco. You can also order from their website. I just sprinkle it over her food every day and she loves the taste of it too!

[Bam]

My Bam had a terrible poopy-butt for a long time and I had to read up on the subject. Hay hay and more hay is what’s recommended if there’s sth wrong with the bacterial flora in the intestines – sth that can happen pretty easily to a bunny, but can take a good long time (3-6 months) to resolve. With Bam, I caused the problem by feeding him a bunny-müesli with all kinds of delicious but bunny-inappropriate stuff in it. He loved it, but it ruined his stomach.

I cut him off from pellets, treats, carrots and fruit. Some veggies he could tolerate a little bit of, like mint and dandelion greens, but dried greens (dandelion, oregano, mint, lemon balm, tarragon, kale) worked better. I also gave him apple-twigs and twigs of willow (the bark has a slightly astrigent effect) + I dried lots of apple-peel. I still had to give him butt-baths several times a week and cut the fur around his butt with scissors and put a home-made barrier cream on him to protect the skin. But then slowly it started to resolve and he became better, slowly but steadily.

I consider him cured now, but I still never give him carrot. He can have dried apple though. He also gets pellets and fresh greens now, but I still take care that he eats his hay by serving it in smaller wads over the day – for some reason, freshly served hay is more appetizing than hay thats been available all day. I also have an all-grass pellet, organic, that he’s learned to like.

I understand that you’re in a stressful situation. This is in most cases a resolvable issue though. It’s not caused by a disease, it’s about the intestines having been colonized by the wrong bacteria.

Here’s a quotation from an excellent article on rabbits’ gastro-intestinal physiology http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/GI_diseases/Rees-Davies.pdf

Most of the common gastro-
intestinal problems seen in captive rabbits are related to inappropriate
diets (low fiber; high protein; high carbohydrate) and infrequent feeding
of treats to which the rabbit is not accustomed. Many of these problems can
be avoided if captive rabbits are fed a diet consisting primarily of fibrous
vegetation, such as grass, hay, and fibrous weeds. Feeding of fruits, grains,
and carbohydrate or fat-based treats should be avoided. Pelleted feeds,
although convenient, should be kept to a minimum, and where pellets used
those manufactured by an extrusion process, which retains the long particle-length of the indigestible fiber, should be chosen.

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