Sorry in advance for the long post. So we saw the vet today. Koji’s ears are clean of wax, so the vet said no more ivermectin, the 2 shots cleaned him up. Yay! Just one last good vacuum of the room to get up any eggs so we hopefully don’t get recontamination.
Getting the urine sample was interesting. I emptied all 3 of his boxes and cleaned them and just left them bare. He did a good sized pee in one, but also a small amount in the other one in his cage, both along with poop piles. Because there was some poop in the sample I collected those and tried to get another. Left the boxes clean and empty again. This time, he did some poops and small amounts of pee in them again. In the past I have only seen him pee a couple times a day, and large amounts – I have never noticed this small (maybe 1/8-1/4 teaspoon) peeing when he poos. I thought it could be due to the clean boxes he’s trying to mark, so I was having some doubts about whether this was UTI since his litter problems have cleared up since we got him his x-pen and contained his exercise.
But the thing still making me wonder: his pee looked different, rather dark and cloudy. When I got it this morning to take to the vets there was a settled layer on the bottom, I know some calcium is normal though. Still…. vet agreed it looked dark. I also saw a quarter sized pee spot on his rug, which is very weird. The small amount of peeing frequently made me wonder, so I decided to do the urinalysis.
Vet did a test strip on the sample and said the white blood cells were “moderately high, +2”, whatever that means. No blood in urine, everything else normal. He said that may be a sign of a UTI, but maybe not, he would send it off for detailed urinalysis. He did note that urine samples can give false negatives though if the rabbit doesn’t fully empty its bladder (the sludge and stuff can settle), and while the frequent small pees could be marking behaviour he was inclined to recommend that I treat for UTI while we wait on results. He also felt Koji, and said his bladder felt small but no thickening or only slight thickening (of what, I do not know), but that he felt no sand to indicate sludge. So I guess it’s up in the air if there is a problem, but as usual I decided better safe than sorry and we did treatment.
My question: vet said he’ll give him a shot and then give me 10 days of 2x a day antibiotics plus bene-bac to keep his belly happy while on it. Well, I assumed the shot today was just the same as what he would give me to treat at home, to get it in his system, so I agreed to this course of action. When I got the invoice he gave a shot of baytril, but the antibiotics I have are sulfatrim. Wouldn’t it be totally ineffective to give just one shot? Aren’t rabbits like people in that the antibiotic has to be sustained to work?
Also, does $20.77 seem high for a shot of like, half a ml of baytril? I have had baytril before for the rats and it was much cheaper. Also the sulfatrim was $40 for 10 days worth, which also seems high to me as I would get a full months supply of baytril and another antibiotic for the rats for only $30. Is sulfatrim a particularly expensive antibiotic in your alls experience? I’ve never had to treat with that before. I’m just still trying to evaluate how I feel about this vet, seems like the consult itself is cheap but all of his treatments and meds are overpriced.
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