I think we’re all back to normal- more or less. The cold just hung on and hung on… Finally we are not coughing all the time, and back to sleeping on beds instead of couches so atleast some of us could sleep well… Ugh.
And to top it all off, we had a sick bunny, too. Poor Holly. We finally took her to the vet after she ate nothing but a little lettuce for a week and was losing fur by the handful. We thought she might have wool block, which we’ve read could be a death sentence if not taken care of quickly. The vet gave her antibiotics for her stomach and her ear (turns out she had a nasty ear infection, too), which we had to give her using a syringe and pineapple juice. The pineapple was supposed to have enzymes that would help break up the hairball. Anyway, after almost another week of giving her the medicine, she still was not eating more than a nibble of hay. We had been plucking the hair (trying to get the loose stuff off so she wouldn’t ingest more), but she started going bald in some spots (Maybe due to malnutrition? We’re not sure.), so we just cut off as much as we could.
I got more suggestions from the breeder we got her from- giving papaya (break down the hair), cilantro (stimulates appetite), lecithin (break down hair) and a mix of coffee, meat tenderizer and molasses (stimulate the gut). Amazing what people know out there. Anway, the cilantro worked like a charm! She downed it the second we put it in her cage and soon after started eating hay and pellets. She is now pooping like a rabbit should and drinking some water on her own. She’s still not out of the woods, and is still skinny, but is doing much better. Whew! Now I know just how important roughage is to a rabbit. Snow is doing great, by the way.
We’re letting fresh air and sunshine in, hoping to banish those germs and get into a healthy spring!
