The Most Common Illness Rabbits Get and How to Prevent It
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Gastrointestinal stasis or ileus is a condition where the intestines of your rabbit has trouble or stops pushing food through the colon and out from his rectum. This is quite a quite a serious illness in rabbits and can potentially be fatal.
The severity of the condition depends on what caused the stasis and why.
What goes in doesn’t quite come out…
It don’t matter where the poo ends up as long as your bunny keeps poo-ing.
Comic Credit: RegardingComic
A healthy rabbit should always been eating and pooping. Typically, rabbits eat and pass food out within 4 - 6 hours. This is also known as a normal gastrointestinal transit time (GITT). Your rabbit's colon sorts the food she eats into indigestible fibre and digestible contents. Indigestible fiber gets passed out as faeces, while non-fibre contents go through fermentation in her cecum. The cecum is the largest part of your rabbit's gastrointestinal (GI) tract where food gets fermented by naturally-occurring bacteria. This process produces gas and caecal pallets, which rabbit owners are familiar with.
An ill rabbit with ileus stops pooping, eating or both. When this happens, naturally-occurring bacteria in her intestines will produce too much gas, causing her to feel bloated.
Unlike dogs and cats, rabbits can’t vomit. This means the only way out is to help their intestines to move the food and gas out via the rectum.
“With small mammals like rabbits, time is always critical. If you notice that your rabbit has not eaten or taken a poo in 12 hours, it is best to bring her to see a vet. We see many owners coming to us only after 2 - 3 days of their rabbits exhibiting such symptoms, and unfortunately many of them don’t survive.” - Dr Arman Chen, Veterinary Surgeon & Practice Manager, Gaia Vets
Here’s the full list of symptoms you should look out for:
Small, dry and firm faecal pellets or no faecal pellets (in some cases, soft stools or diarrhoea may occur instead)
Lack of appetite
Lethargy or reluctance to move
Teeth grinding (a response to pain)
Hunched posture (a response to pain in the intestines)
Lack of grooming
They feel their stress in their guts…
Among many other things, stress can cause ileus because it affects peristalsis in the GI tract or gut motility. And many things can cause your rabbit to feel stressed. Some common causes include:
Underlying diseases or pain from these diseases e.g. dental problems, metabolic diseases
Anxiety (could be acute i.e. isolated episodes or prolonged stress)
Infection
Environmental changes e.g. presence of new pets, unfamiliar sounds etc.
The most common cause is usually improper diet. Diets which consists mainly of pellets instead of hay will encourage ileus to develop. Consistently feeding your rabbit cereal products or treats high in sugars e.g. yoghurt drops, fruits etc. can also threaten good bacteria growth and promotes the growth of bacterial pathogens.
Other possible causes can include:
Ingesting toxins or toxic food e.g chocolate, avocado
Ingesting foreign body e.g. hair,
Lack of exercise
Rabbits are also fastidious groomers like cats, which means they do ingest their fur. Rabbits with healthy guts will be able to remove the hair from the gut but a rabbit with ileus may face the issue of ingested fur compacting together with food etc. resulting in hairballs.
What can I do to help my rabbit?
Make sure your rabbit’s diet is primarily hay (e.g. timothy, orchard hay) and give her access to plenty of clean, fresh water. Fibre and water are the key to a healthy and motile gut. Some pet owners also soak leafy green vegetables e.g. kale, parsley etc. in water to increase their rabbit’s water intake.
Daily exercise also promotes gut motility so you can provide supervised activity time outside of your rabbit’s cage. Check out some activities you can do and have fun with your bunny. Pet owners who routinely weigh their rabbits every month and keep track of their body condition scores also help prevent obesity. If your rabbit is overweight, it is a clear sign that her diet is not ideal or she needs to be more active.
Maintaining a routine with your rabbit is also important as this reduces their stress levels. If your rabbit has to be subjected to sudden changes in diet or environmental changes e.g. a new pet arriving or being boarded etc., caretakers need to be alert to any signs of ileus mentioned above.
Lastly, annual or biannual health checks also serve as a preventive measure against ileus. How?
Health screening and tests provides a record of your rabbit’s baseline. This means any deviation can be detected as an abnormality and a possible symptom of a serious disease.
Your vet can catch on to subtle symptoms during the examination which you may have missed especially in pocket pets such as rabbits.