Baby bunny with an infection

[Hollandblaze03]

My holland lop recently had a litter of 4 babies. They are about 3 weeks now and one of them appears to have a urinary tract infection. The baby’s vent area is swollen and there is some urine scalding. There is also a yellowish green discharge. We contacted at only rabbit vet near us and they won’t have an appointment until Monday! What do we do??

 

[Morgan Mayon]

Although the bacteria ultimately causes the bladder infection, there are many factors that may make the rabbit more susceptible to the infection, including:

• Obesity
• Lack of exercise
• Cage confinement

You will need to give your veterinarian a thorough history of your rabbit's health and onset of symptoms. He or she will then conduct a blood and urine analysis on the animal. If an infection is present, the urine will typically show apparent abnormalities such as abnormal coloring or increased white blood cell counts. Based on these, your veterinarian will order a urine culture in order to determine the exact strain of bacteria that is present in your rabbit's urinary tract.

 

[Hollandblaze03]

We managed to find a vet near us who would see the baby and they gave us antibiotics and told us that the baby might be “mentally deficient”. When we brought her home we gave her the medicine and decided to give her a nice heating pad. She sat on it for a while then got up and a nasty green sludge came out. We cleaned it up and put her on the heating pad again where more sludge came out until eventually there was only urine coming out. She seems to be doing better. I think it really helped to get the sludge out.