Doe's foot pad's

[GoinBackToCali]

My senior doe has been bred, and she is now a froot loop..

She digs and chews on everything incessantly. She digs her feed out of her feeder, and chews on it, and its metal.

This morning I noticed a small amount of dried blood on her sheet rock square, so I pulled her and checked her over. Her front paws had what basically looked like sore hocks. The blood was actually on the front of her metal feeder.

So I was worried she could get some sort of blood stream infection, yanno like humans need a tetanus shot, but then it occurred to me, she basically just has the same thing as sore hocks, just in the front paw pads. She has had sore hocks before when I got her, and she's still kickin, so I am probably worried for nothing.

Do I need to be concerned, has anybody else ever had one do this?

Aside from that her other weird behavior that I discussed with a senior mod this morning, which is pretty danged funny, she has a mouthful of hay. All the time, she carries it around,like a mustache. She looks like she is in disguise. She is obsessed with this hay. She carries it around constantly and digs incessantly.
I am not joking, it looks like shes going *Uh.. nope.. Marie Antoinette left.. I am..um.. Inspector Clouseau, as you can tell by my mustache* And her eyes look HUGE, like she is genuinely surprised we are not fooled.
We previously did not know if she took or not. She has had a litter before, but I never noticed this behavior before. But then again, at that point, I was told to *let them be, it will happen naturally.* so I tried to disturb them as little as possible.

I told ya'll, she is a nut..

So re-iterating my question, do I need to be concerned about the paws, they are not bleeding, they look dry actually, and shes using them just fine. I am just a paranoid bun mommy.

Zin

 

[naturestee]

Well, aside from damaging her paws she sounds like a lot of fun!

Can you take her feeder out, and maybe replace it with something else? Maybe one of those plastic crocks that attaches to the cage wall, so she can't throw it everywhere and loose all her food. Check for any sharp edges that she might hurt herself on.

And she'll probably want something else to dig in. You could try stuffing hay in a paper lunch bag and tying it shut with twine. Some bunnies just rip it open and eat it, others dig at it, throw it around, and generally beat the stuffing out of it. Another idea is to give her an old phone book to dig at.

If she was in the wild, she'd be digging a burrow for the babies about now. That's probably why she's going nuts digging.

Oh, and Neosporin (normal, sans pain reliever!) on her wounds will help prevent infection.

 

[aurora369]

Can you give her a practice nest box? Somewhere for her to build nest so she can dig in the hay all she wants?

I know Wildfire built nests for about two weeks before her babies where due. I just kept giving her a bin full of hay, and she kept building and destroying nests. She would build about two a day.

Sekura is my old unspayed doe, she was too old by the time I got her and she's about 8 now. She builds nests and digs every couple days. I have four bins in their cage, two full of hay and two litter boxes. I had to put screens over the litter boxes to stop her from digging, so now she does all her digging/building in the hay bins.

I really think a small cardboard box stuffed with hay would help your bun. Something big enough for her to get into, but not so big it takes over the whole cage. Then she can dig and build in the hay to her hearts delight.

--Dawn

 

[gentle giants]

I just wanted to say, do watch those sore spots closely. I had one of my Flemish bucks get sore hocks, and it didn't look real bad, just irritated. But even with me applying Neosporin, he still managed to get an abcess on one foot a few days after I thought it looked healed. He's the only one I've ever had do that, but now I know it can happen I'm all paranoid about any of the others getting sore hocks.