It is true that it’s difficult for the human to recognize illness in a rabbit, and that is often why the decline can seem so swift and dramatic. We simply don’t understand that something is wrong until something is really, really wrong. Rabbits do their utmost to prevent anyone from noticing that they’re poorly.
Rabbits have a different mechanism for calcium metabolism than humans and most other mammals. Rabbits absorb all dietary calcium, whereas in humans, the uptake in the small intestine is tightly regulated by vitamin D. The calcium that’s not absorbed just passes through the intestines and comes out with the poop. This is why vitamin D is so important for the prevention of osteoporosis in humans. In rabbits, all calcium is taken up, and transported in the in the bloodstream to the kidneys, where any excess is filtered out. This is why rabbits can be prone to excess blood calcium, and why their pee leaves white residue, but having lots of available calcium aids in bone healing. This is of course diet-dependant, the healing rabbit’s diet must contain sufficient amounts of calcium. If a rabbit doesnt get enough calcium in the diet, it will extract calcium from their own bones and teeth, same as a human.
Rabbits are often used as model animals in bone healing research experiments. There’s lots to find on this topic on Google scholar, but it it’s obviously not very nice to read about animal experiments.
As for wound healing, rabbit wounds do heal fast, which often presents a problem. Rabbits are prone to forming abscesses rather than fighting off a wound infection. Rabbit pus is thick like toothpaste, so it’s not possible to place a drain like you would in for example a dog’s wound. The owner often has to open the wound daily or twice daily using moist compresses, and pack the wound so it can heal from the inside and out.
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