What happened?

[GlennTheLionhead]

Hi,

We’ve had a hell of a weekend with Nellie, she was eating fine at 11 am on Saturday and as of 12 pm stopped eating, we took her to the exotic who gave treatment, we monitored her at home for a few hours and her condition deteriorated, she was admited to the emergency hospital around 8pm and given aggressive IV as treatment… She pulled through the night and has been on the mend since with a great appetite… Phew, it was a long weekend! We are so happy with the efforts all the vets have put in over the weekend for her.

I’m not 100% sure if it was a blockage or bloat that she had, her symptoms were stasis, no input or output and her stomach was increasing in size and ballooning but her glucose level were only slightly elevated. Would this be more indicative of a blockage or bloat?

Are there some preventative measures anyone can recommend so this doesn’t happen again? It could even be possible that this was stress – in which case I’m not really sure how to prevent this consistently as the simplest things like loud noises, even family visiting seems to be enough to at least give her gas episodes – she sometimes gets gas from arthritis or long hair.

We have posted about her gas here previously and tried so many things that you have all recommended previously – perhaps it’s time to just start sheering her.

[LBJ10]

Unfortunately, some bunnies are just prone to gas episodes. It can be triggered by certain foods, stress, molting, you name it. And sometimes the owner is never able to pinpoint exactly what the cause is. I do remember you talking about Nellie’s gas episodes and I don’t remember you ever finding the exact cause. As for her stomach increasing in size at the vet… that sounds more like gas building rather than a blockage simply because nothing was going in (unless the vet was force feeding her). True bloat though is rare and almost always fatal. Few rabbits actually survive it, so I doubt that is what Nellie had.

Have you tried any kind of supplements with Nellie? Probiotics? Some people have had luck with those reducing the number of episodes. If it’s stress, then my vet suggested melatonin… although it was difficult to find 1mg tablets. It helped calm my bunny down, but he was suffering from self-mutilation/fur pulling every time he was stressed.

[GlennTheLionhead]

I still haven’t really found the cause, some signs are pointing to stress (she’s sensitive to even minor things that wouldn’t really bother other buns too much) and fur ingestion, she has long hair and does all the grooming for herself and Glenn (we do trim her) . I may just have to except that sometimes it’s just unclear what causes it, it’s just frustrating!

I terms of gas/blockage, her tummy was hard and gassy and she got prokineticks and spasmolitics from her vet and we were advised to syringe feed (we suspected gas at the time and I don’t think anyone expected it to get worse) so we did that and then after a few hours of waiting for the meds to take effect nothing had changed and the tummy felt more distended and she was very lethargic so we took her to the ER vet. Perhaps her tummy was in bad stasis so the food and smithecone just sat there accumulating 🙁

She’s doing really well now still. We have taken on the suggestions from yourself and others I’ve been in touch with and we have some probiotoics and multivitamins on the way! Fingers crossed this helps. Were also reducing the amount of fresh greens and increasing forage in hopes to keep the fiber intake high.

I will speak to the vet about the melatonin, thanks 😊.

I am in two minds about calming plug ins to keep her stress low, some of these seem to be effective and marketed to bunnies but I thought that these kinds of scent diffusers were bad for them – this was mentioned in a different context in a previous post of mine.

[Bam]

It does sound like a partial blockage near where the stomach connects to the intestine. That’s the most common location for a partial blockage. (One of my buns had that. Vet treated with spasmolytics and iv fluids and pain meds. He had to stay over at the animal hospital).

With a partial blockage like that, the body will pull fluids into the stomach, making it fill up even if you dont feed. This is why syringe feeding even with only water is not recommended, it just stays in the stomach and adds to the distension. And even if you give water, the bun becomes dehydrated bc the fluids from the body are drawn into the stomach. IV fluids are needed to get the fluid balance right.

As LBJ says, some buns are prone to GI trouble. The reason why is rarely clear. Stress changes the pH in the gut, so that is a likely cause,

I have never used plug-in herbal remedies. The scent of herbs is generally thought to be calming for rabbits, but it doesnt take a lot of herbs. Maybe you could make a  potpourri bowl and place it where the buns cant reach it (they’d eat it), then you could go and stir the leaves now and then to release the scent. Rabbits pick up on mere molecules of scents.

[GlennTheLionhead]

It does sound the same as what happened to one of your buns! She also had to stay in overnight and Glenn stayed with her at the hospital overnight, I do think he helped her! She actually chewed through her IV after a little while so they switched to frequent subq fluids or something similar.

Oooh a potpourri bowl sound like a great idea! Would you use fresh or dried herbs? And any particular kind? I have seen you can buy lavender flowers too which I could add to the potpourri – I may also introduce dried lavender forage to go along with her regular dried chamomile!

We’ve ordered some fiber supplements and introduced a little earlier today. Fingers crossed these things help reduce the incidents.

[Bam]

I have only made potpourri with flowers and leaves from my garden. It’s too late in the year for roses now, and store bought roses are not really grown for fragrance, just for looks.

I think any herbs would do great. Rosemary, mint, lavender, chamomille, sage, lemon balm, herb fennel. Some herbs dont have much of a lasting fragrance when they’re dry though, that goes for cilantro and parsley and basil.

Sometimes they sell little plastic pots with herbs in the produce aisle in food stores. Just touching a basil or mint plant releases lots of fragrance.

[LBJ10]

That’s a good idea Bam! And you actually reminded me of something. Do they still make those potpourri crock pots? They were meant to melt wax potpourri. Anyway, I had one many years ago that had a decent sized bowl (i.e. it was shaped like a mini crock pot). I was able to add water and dried potpourri to it. The warmer heated it up enough to help give off more fragrance than potpourri normally would. So depending on how strong of a scent would be needed to have a calming effect, maybe something like that could be tried with herbs too.

[prince dorian the bun]

Dorian’s very prone to gas and these episodes,  so can commiserate. I have yet to find a magic cure. He does tend to be more prone due to heavy molts, but it also more likely if he molts triggered by temp fluctuations (really hot to cool), so winter molting is luckily not an issue. All I can figure out is to keep up with grooming (though this is hard as he has such fine fur), make sure they get lots of water, hay and greens. I use a molting herb mix (not sure it helps) and recently started giving them dried chicory root (found some raw dried for humans) also tried probiotic,  but he won’t eat it (Miu likes it, but she doesn’t really have issues). He hasn’t had issue lately,  but it’s cool to cold weather now, so figure he won’t even if he is molting a little. Oh I also really keep treats to very small amounts, and same with pellets.  I had tried no pellets or treats, but it didn’t seem like it helped either way.

Oh and if he’s having issues, catching earlier is always better. I find simethecone helps if really early. Massage helps as does fluids, hot water bottle and if bad, pain meds. Movement also helps, you want the gas to move out if their system. I stopped using the gut mobility drug because I suspect his worst incident was due to that causing a possible partial blockage. (No blockage on xray,  but big gas bubbles. Did go down once he had pain med IV and fluids.)

Anyway it sucks! Sorry Nellie has this issue!

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