Runny Cecotropes

[HannahRose]

My female rabbit has had runny cechotropes for 4 days now, it isn’t constant as I have seen her eating some like normal but is on and off throughout the day. She’s acting normal in herself and is eating and drinking as normal.
Her diet hasn’t changed apart from the fact that she’s having less pellets now as I have separated her from my male rabbit when they are eating as she used to steal his! This has resulted in her eating more hay. Since I noticed the runny cecotropes I have stopped feeding them veg to increase their hay intake.
I was wondering what may have caused this and whether I should be taking her to the vets?
Thanks for your help! ?

[Harley&Thumper]

Bumping this so other people will see it. I don’t have any experience with this.

[Bam]

Changes to the cecotropes after a change in diet is common. If there are normal round poops as well as runny or sticky cecal poop, it’s not diarrhea and not a veterinary emergency.

This will most likely adjust itself when her tummy has settled. It can be a little difficult for a rabbit to digest more hay than it’s used to, because hay requires a lot of processing by various microorganisms to be rendered digestible. Most notably, rabbits can make digestible starch/sugars from cellulose -but only with the aid of their tummy microorganisms. This conversion takes place in the cecum. The result is cecotropes. Without the right microbial balance in the cecum, the cecotropes don’t come out quite as they should be.

This rights itself with time if the bun is kept on a hay-rich diet. While her tummy is adjusting you should still give her some pellets (but you didn’t say you’d taken her off pellets completely so I’m guessing she is getting a little bit of pellets.)

As long as your bun is active, alert, eating and drinking and pooping normal round poops, I think you can give this a couple of weeks. You should start seeing improvement pretty soon though. The cecals should go from liquid to more solid, but it can be a couple of weeks or even longer before the cecals are “perfect” again. If there’s no improvement or if you start seeing symptoms like inappetence, tummy ache/gas, lethargy and/or constipation, it’s obviously time to contact a vet.

[Sofia]

I had a smilar problem and I found a link that really helped me, it’s about ISC ( intermittent soft cecotropes). Your bunny might not have isc at all, but I’ll put the link down and you can can give it a read. 

[jerseygirl]

What type of hay is she eating, HannahRose?

[Author]

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