GI stasis symptoms not going away

[Panos87]

Hello everyone.

New to the forum, definitely could use some help.

First of all pardon me if something doesn’t make sense, I am not a native English speaker so I’m trying to translate as best as I can.

Me and my girlfriend decided to get a bunny about 1,5 years ago, so she must be around 2 years old now. Neutered about a year ago. She’s probably a crossbreed of Lionhead and Holland Lop (at least I recognize these characteristics, maybe I’m wrong).

45 days ago she had a GI stasis (or something close to that). One morning she was hunched, slow breathing, hardly moving. We took her to a new vet, thankfully specialized at bunnies (our previous vet apparently wasn’t), and got diagnosed with GI stasis. Probably caused by hairballs since she is extremely furry and our previous vet never gave us directions about grooming her, or occasionally giving her paste for hairballs. She was given injections with meds and fluids to hydrate as far as I know. We took her home, and followed exactly the directions from the vet, we gave her the meds and all.

She improved a lot. Gradually, her belly became softer, she was pooping, she was eating more eagerly with the syringe and by herself, and everything seemed to be getting back to normal. We visited the vet, said her clinical image was really improved, so we stopped the meds and for 5-6 days everything seemed to be ok.

But then she started not eating very eagerly. She wasn’t finishing her pellets (which she loved to eat) and she was hardly eating hay at all (she was never a huge fan of hay no matter how many different brands and types we tried, but it wasn’t that bad). She wasn’t drinking a lot of water either.

We took her to the vet again, and she gave us 2 options. The first option was to check her teeth to see if there was an issue there that caused her not eating properly, and the second option was blood tests and an ultrasound to see if the GI stasis was cured. In order to check her teeth, she had to be sedated and we were scared to do that so we chose the second option.

Both the blood test and the ultrasound showed that there was still some inflammation in her intestines so we started the medication again. It showed some improvement but not much. She is still not drinking enough water, still not going crazy about her pellets like she did in the past and is nibbling on some hay every now and then. But when my girlfriend approaches her with the syringe to feed her, 9/10 times she’s eating like crazy. And her poop is full of hair (even though we groom her every day and we give her the paste for the hairballs and the paraffin oil the vet told us).

However her image is not bad. She is quite active, running around, doing her binkies and showing she is happy, and her weight is quite steady (around 2 kilos as it was when she was perfectly healthy) and her belly is quite soft. She doesn’t seem 100% like she was before all that, but I would say she is around 80%.

But the facts remain: she is drinking very little water, not eating hay, not being really eager to finish her pellets, and she is mainly interested in the emeraid sustain we feed her with the syringe.

And we are totally confused by what’s going on.

In our minds there are 3 scenarios

1. All of this is a remnant of the GI stasis, that will gradually go away, and there is nothing to worry about. We just keep on doing what we are doing and one morning she will start drinking her water, eating her hay and pellets and our life will go back to normal.

2. She has issues with her teeth and that’s why she’s not really interested in hard foods like pellets and hay but devours the emeraid from the syringe which is a soft paste like food and does not cause pain by chewing. However this scenario does not explain why she is not drinking water.

3. She has become spoiled because all this time that this thing is going on we are all over her, feeding her, grooming her, giving her all the attention possible, and that’s why she prefers to eat with the syringe due to the interaction with us, rather than eating her pellets and hay by herself. This scenario though does not explain the water issue either.

We have tried to stop the syringe feeding for some days to see if she will eat more eagerly by herself, but nothing changed so we started the syringe feeding again.

Is it possible that the symptoms from the GI stasis still have not totally gone away after 45 days, so it’s a matter of time and patience and everything will go back to normal? Is it usual for a GI stasis to last that long?

Should we go check her teeth and take the risk of the sedation?

Any help/ideas would be greatly appreciated because we are losing our minds.

PS. Sorry for the very long text but I thought I should include all the details possible to help you understand the situation.

 

[Preitler]

Welcome,

what exactly is her diet? You could try offering her some soft, damp pellets, if she eats that in my opinion it could be a hint towards a dental issue.
Would she eat the fine stuff from the bottom of the hay bag/bale? My rabbits like it, even when green food is available and normal hay is ignored.

Can't tell about the symptoms, or treament.

 

[JBun]

It's good to include all the details as it helps to better determine exactly what might be going on. The selective eating in particular, was an important detail.

Selective eating will most often be a problem with a particular food, such as it spoiling or being a new batch that the rabbit doesn't care for the taste, or dental problems causing mouth pain. I would suspect a dental problem with your rabbit. Though a problem with her food could still be a possibility, but I don't think it's as likely because of her issue with not wanting to drink, while still eagerly accepting syringe feeds.

https://hare.as.miami.edu/dental.html

www.exoticpetvet.com/dental-disease-in-rabbits.html

(CONTAINS MEDICAL RELATED PHOTOS)
https://lbah.com/rabbit/rabbit-teeth-conditions/

She'll eat the soft emeraid mush, because it causes the least amount of pain for her to chew, like you proposed. Now if she wouldn't eat the syringe feeding mix either, that would point to some other issue. A rabbit experiencing stomach discomfort or pain, wouldn't want to eat much of anything, including the emeraid. But because she is eagerly wanting to eat the emeraid and also behaving relatively normal otherwise, it means she is hungry and does want to eat, but the pain from chewing certain foods is causing her to be very selective about what she wants to eat, favoring soft foods.

This can include being selective about drinking water. Sometimes a rabbit will drink more water when they have dental issues, because they're hungry but don't want to chew, or the water soothes the mouth pain. But if drinking is also causing mouth pain or discomfort, then the rabbit will be reluctant to drink, or may not be able to, depending on the dental issue.

I'm presuming you use warm water with the emeraid, so you could try offering warm water to see if she'll drink that on her own. If she does, then you know that it has something to do with cool water causing mouth pain, and that will usually be from an infected tooth. But if she won't drink warm water either, it may have to do with how she laps up water that is causing irritation or difficulty from whatever dental problem is going on.

This could especially happen with overgrown incisors, which can also sometimes cause a rabbit to chew or pull at and ingest their fur. So this could also explain the increase of fur in the poop, unless your rabbit is just going through a normal molt right now.

My suggestion would be to keep up with regular syringe feeds until you can get a proper dental exam (and treatment) done asap, or you risk her developing GI stasis again. Making a pellet mush and seeing if she'll eat that on her own, is also an option to try until the vet can get this treated. Though if she does have an incisor issue, she may not be able to eat on her own and can only be syringe fed for now.

 

[Panos87]

Welcome,

what exactly is her diet? You could try offering her some soft, damp pellets, if she eats that in my opinion it could be a hint towards a dental issue.
Would she eat the fine stuff from the bottom of the hay bag/bale? My rabbits like it, even when green food is available and normal hay is ignored.

Can't tell about the symptoms, or treament.

Her diet consists of 45 grams of Oxbow pellets, various types and brands of grass/hay/botanicals depending on her mood and appetite, green veggies like 3 times per week, and treats like oxbow skin and coat once per day (and now that she has issues we also give emeraid sustain with syringe).

I haven’t tried damping her pellets. Maybe it’s a good idea and I’ll give it a shot. But I believe the outcome would be something close to what happens when we feed her the emeraid. If we moisten the pellets enough to give her with the syringe, she’ll probably eat it. If we just moisten the pellets and leave it in her bowl, I don’t think she’ll have any interest at all. But I can try to make sure.

As for the fine stuff from the bottom of the hay bag, she totally ignores it.
The only hay that she has a little interest for (which is not exactly hay but I don’t know how else to call it) is Bunny’s all nature botanicals with raspberry leaves and cornflower blossoms. She mainly eats the bigger “branch” like grass from that, and she totally ignores the fine stuff.

There are times that she may totally ignore her bowl of botanicals, but when I go near her and take some pieces to feed her by hand, she comes and eats it from my hand. If I put it back in the bowl, she may continue eating or she may just ignore it.

 

[Panos87]

It's good to include all the details as it helps to better determine exactly what might be going on. The selective eating in particular, was an important detail.

Selective eating will most often be a problem with a particular food, such as it spoiling or being a new batch that the rabbit doesn't care for the taste, or dental problems causing mouth pain. I would suspect a dental problem with your rabbit. Though a problem with her food could still be a possibility, but I don't think it's as likely because of her issue with not wanting to drink, while still eagerly accepting syringe feeds.

https://hare.as.miami.edu/dental.html

www.exoticpetvet.com/dental-disease-in-rabbits.html

(CONTAINS MEDICAL RELATED PHOTOS)
https://lbah.com/rabbit/rabbit-teeth-conditions/

She'll eat the soft emeraid mush, because it causes the least amount of pain for her to chew, like you proposed. Now if she wouldn't eat the syringe feeding mix either, that would point to some other issue. A rabbit experiencing stomach discomfort or pain, wouldn't want to eat much of anything, including the emeraid. But because she is eagerly wanting to eat the emeraid and also behaving relatively normal otherwise, it means she is hungry and does want to eat, but the pain from chewing certain foods is causing her to be very selective about what she wants to eat, favoring soft foods.

This can include being selective about drinking water. Sometimes a rabbit will drink more water when they have dental issues, because they're hungry but don't want to chew, or the water soothes the mouth pain. But if drinking is also causing mouth pain or discomfort, then the rabbit will be reluctant to drink, or may not be able to, depending on the dental issue.

I'm presuming you use warm water with the emeraid, so you could try offering warm water to see if she'll drink that on her own. If she does, then you know that it has something to do with cool water causing mouth pain, and that will usually be from an infected tooth. But if she won't drink warm water either, it may have to do with how she laps up water that is causing irritation or difficulty from whatever dental problem is going on.

This could especially happen with overgrown incisors, which can also sometimes cause a rabbit to chew or pull at and ingest their fur. So this could also explain the increase of fur in the poop, unless your rabbit is just going through a normal molt right now.

My suggestion would be to keep up with regular syringe feeds until you can get a proper dental exam (and treatment) done asap, or you risk her developing GI stasis again. Making a pellet mush and seeing if she'll eat that on her own, is also an option to try until the vet can get this treated.

Thank you so so much for all the time and effort you put to provide all this information!

I sincerely appreciate it!!

The vet did suggest a dental check but we were a bit scared because of the anesthesia. But it seems there is no other way to either solve the problem (if there is a dental issue), or at least eliminate that possibility and decide on how we proceed (if there isn’t a dental issue).

I would contact the vet either way to let her know how the bunny was doing. I will schedule an appointment for a dental check asap and hope for the best.

Again thank you very very much!!

 

[The Bunny Room]

Hello everyone.

New to the forum, definitely could use some help.

First of all pardon me if something doesn’t make sense, I am not a native English speaker so I’m trying to translate as best as I can.

Me and my girlfriend decided to get a bunny about 1,5 years ago, so she must be around 2 years old now. Neutered about a year ago. She’s probably a crossbreed of Lionhead and Holland Lop (at least I recognize these characteristics, maybe I’m wrong).

45 days ago she had a GI stasis (or something close to that). One morning she was hunched, slow breathing, hardly moving. We took her to a new vet, thankfully specialized at bunnies (our previous vet apparently wasn’t), and got diagnosed with GI stasis. Probably caused by hairballs since she is extremely furry and our previous vet never gave us directions about grooming her, or occasionally giving her paste for hairballs. She was given injections with meds and fluids to hydrate as far as I know. We took her home, and followed exactly the directions from the vet, we gave her the meds and all.

She improved a lot. Gradually, her belly became softer, she was pooping, she was eating more eagerly with the syringe and by herself, and everything seemed to be getting back to normal. We visited the vet, said her clinical image was really improved, so we stopped the meds and for 5-6 days everything seemed to be ok.

But then she started not eating very eagerly. She wasn’t finishing her pellets (which she loved to eat) and she was hardly eating hay at all (she was never a huge fan of hay no matter how many different brands and types we tried, but it wasn’t that bad). She wasn’t drinking a lot of water either.

We took her to the vet again, and she gave us 2 options. The first option was to check her teeth to see if there was an issue there that caused her not eating properly, and the second option was blood tests and an ultrasound to see if the GI stasis was cured. In order to check her teeth, she had to be sedated and we were scared to do that so we chose the second option.

Both the blood test and the ultrasound showed that there was still some inflammation in her intestines so we started the medication again. It showed some improvement but not much. She is still not drinking enough water, still not going crazy about her pellets like she did in the past and is nibbling on some hay every now and then. But when my girlfriend approaches her with the syringe to feed her, 9/10 times she’s eating like crazy. And her poop is full of hair (even though we groom her every day and we give her the paste for the hairballs and the paraffin oil the vet told us).

However her image is not bad. She is quite active, running around, doing her binkies and showing she is happy, and her weight is quite steady (around 2 kilos as it was when she was perfectly healthy) and her belly is quite soft. She doesn’t seem 100% like she was before all that, but I would say she is around 80%.

But the facts remain: she is drinking very little water, not eating hay, not being really eager to finish her pellets, and she is mainly interested in the emeraid sustain we feed her with the syringe.

And we are totally confused by what’s going on.

In our minds there are 3 scenarios

1. All of this is a remnant of the GI stasis, that will gradually go away, and there is nothing to worry about. We just keep on doing what we are doing and one morning she will start drinking her water, eating her hay and pellets and our life will go back to normal.

2. She has issues with her teeth and that’s why she’s not really interested in hard foods like pellets and hay but devours the emeraid from the syringe which is a soft paste like food and does not cause pain by chewing. However this scenario does not explain why she is not drinking water.

3. She has become spoiled because all this time that this thing is going on we are all over her, feeding her, grooming her, giving her all the attention possible, and that’s why she prefers to eat with the syringe due to the interaction with us, rather than eating her pellets and hay by herself. This scenario though does not explain the water issue either.

We have tried to stop the syringe feeding for some days to see if she will eat more eagerly by herself, but nothing changed so we started the syringe feeding again.

Is it possible that the symptoms from the GI stasis still have not totally gone away after 45 days, so it’s a matter of time and patience and everything will go back to normal? Is it usual for a GI stasis to last that long?

Should we go check her teeth and take the risk of the sedation?

Any help/ideas would be greatly appreciated because we are losing our minds.

PS. Sorry for the very long text but I thought I should include all the details possible to help you understand the situation.

I switch to only Timothy grass when any concern arises with digestive changes. During the shedding season more frequent grooming may help.

I hope she is back on track soon! Avoid any unnecessary stress for her. Some people swear by a tiny amount of fresh comfrey leaf, or fresh pineapple but I would ask around to get consensus on this! I have heard mixed suggestions from different bunny owners.

I hope she feels better soon.

 

[The Bunny Room]

Welcome,

what exactly is her diet? You could try offering her some soft, damp pellets, if she eats that in my opinion it could be a hint towards a dental issue.
Would she eat the fine stuff from the bottom of the hay bag/bale? My rabbits like it, even when green food is available and normal hay is ignored.

Can't tell about the symptoms, or treament.

Some people use something called “Critical Care” to treat rabbits with GI stasis who are not eating. I hope things are improving.

 

[The Bunny Room]

I switch to only Timothy grass when any concern arises with digestive changes. During the shedding season more frequent grooming may help.

I hope she is back on track soon! Avoid any unnecessary stress for her. Some people swear by a tiny amount of fresh comfrey leaf, or fresh pineapple but I would ask around to get consensus on this! I have heard mixed suggestions from different bunny owners.

I hope she feels better soon.

Sorry, I finally had the chance to carefully read this.

Also, just an idea … if you can find fresh willow sticks, offer this (after washing it and drying the sticks or you may even try in the oven at 160 degrees/low temp for an hour just to be cautious and kill bacteria) and see if she will chew it. My rabbits LOVE chewing willow sticks and it is generally a treat for most rabbits. If your rabbit refuses to nibble on the stick, then I would suspect a dental problem.

Also, ask your vet about comfrey leaves. I have a friend who has a rabbit that had chronic issues with GI stasis and I gave her a comfrey plant. She gives a small amount of fresh comfrey leaf weekly to her rabbit and the rabbit has not had any more problems.They also give the rabbit a very small piece of fresh pineapple each week.

 

[MYVOLE]

comfrey leaves are such a good thing.I will try this to my bunnies.thanks

 

[Panos87]

It's good to include all the details as it helps to better determine exactly what might be going on. The selective eating in particular, was an important detail.

Selective eating will most often be a problem with a particular food, such as it spoiling or being a new batch that the rabbit doesn't care for the taste, or dental problems causing mouth pain. I would suspect a dental problem with your rabbit. Though a problem with her food could still be a possibility, but I don't think it's as likely because of her issue with not wanting to drink, while still eagerly accepting syringe feeds.

https://hare.as.miami.edu/dental.html

www.exoticpetvet.com/dental-disease-in-rabbits.html

(CONTAINS MEDICAL RELATED PHOTOS)
https://lbah.com/rabbit/rabbit-teeth-conditions/

She'll eat the soft emeraid mush, because it causes the least amount of pain for her to chew, like you proposed. Now if she wouldn't eat the syringe feeding mix either, that would point to some other issue. A rabbit experiencing stomach discomfort or pain, wouldn't want to eat much of anything, including the emeraid. But because she is eagerly wanting to eat the emeraid and also behaving relatively normal otherwise, it means she is hungry and does want to eat, but the pain from chewing certain foods is causing her to be very selective about what she wants to eat, favoring soft foods.

This can include being selective about drinking water. Sometimes a rabbit will drink more water when they have dental issues, because they're hungry but don't want to chew, or the water soothes the mouth pain. But if drinking is also causing mouth pain or discomfort, then the rabbit will be reluctant to drink, or may not be able to, depending on the dental issue.

I'm presuming you use warm water with the emeraid, so you could try offering warm water to see if she'll drink that on her own. If she does, then you know that it has something to do with cool water causing mouth pain, and that will usually be from an infected tooth. But if she won't drink warm water either, it may have to do with how she laps up water that is causing irritation or difficulty from whatever dental problem is going on.

This could especially happen with overgrown incisors, which can also sometimes cause a rabbit to chew or pull at and ingest their fur. So this could also explain the increase of fur in the poop, unless your rabbit is just going through a normal molt right now.

My suggestion would be to keep up with regular syringe feeds until you can get a proper dental exam (and treatment) done asap, or you risk her developing GI stasis again. Making a pellet mush and seeing if she'll eat that on her own, is also an option to try until the vet can get this treated. Though if she does have an incisor issue, she may not be able to eat on her own and can only be syringe fed for now.

Went for the dental exam yesterday. Nothing wrong with the teeth. Blood tests were good, x ray showed nothing. We’ll do one more ultrasound during the week. But it seems that the problem is rather behavioral than pathological.

I guess she’s used to us feeding her with the syringe and she has become spoiled.

Seems like a “war of attrition” at this point. She refuses to eat her hay knowing that eventually we’ll feed her with the syringe. And we must hold back with the syringe feeding, hoping that she’ll eventually go back to her normal routine of eating her hay and pellets.

Of course we can’t just stop the syringe feeding and let her starve till she changes her mind. But we need to hold back a bit and somehow lure her towards her hay bowl. I’ll try to mix a bit of dried fruits or veggies with her hay and hope she gets more interested in it. But apart from that I don’t know what else to do.

Good news is that the exams show that she is healthy (we still have to do the ultrasound though). Bad news is that we’re still guessing and trying to figure out what to do.

 

[JBun]

That's really surprising. It's pretty unusual for a rabbit to actually like being syringe fed. Usually it's a fight to get them to take it. I'm glad everything checked out. Maybe try smearing some of the syringe mix on her hay and pellets, see if that gets her interested in eating it again.

 

[Panos87]

That's really surprising. It's pretty unusual for a rabbit to actually like being syringe fed. Usually it's a fight to get them to take it. I'm glad everything checked out. Maybe try smearing some of the syringe mix on her hay and pellets, see if that gets her interested in eating it again.

We went for the ultrasound yesterday… Unfortunately no improvement from the ultrasound we did a month ago. There are still hairballs blocking the intestine and causing inflammation. It’s not a full blockage since she’s pooping (a bit smaller poops though), but the issue still remains.

So it wasn’t the teeth, it wasn’t behavioral, it was the GI stasis remnants that didn’t improve.

That’s why she’s not so eager to eat or drink.

The vet gave us more meds and supplements, she said that we must be more “aggressive” with our approach this time cause the next step is surgery and in that case we’ll have to go to another vet she suggested because she doesn’t do these types of surgeries due to the extremely low success rates.

So what I understood from her words and facial expressions is that if the approach we follow now does not solve the issue, we are facing bad bad things….

I am angry, I am sad, all bad emotions are flooding in me right now, but I have to focus and do what I have to do. Give the meds, give her water with electrolytes every 2 hours, feed her with the syringe and hope for the best.

The positive thing is that the bunny is active. She is energetic. But to me this is also the scariest thing cause I can’t imagine watching her gradually fall and becoming catatonic. Even the thought of that makes me wanna cry.

Anyway.
These are the news.

We also thought about contacting a groomer to see what can be done to avoid ingesting even more hair since she is extremely furry and even though we brush her all the time, she still sheds and swallows hair cause she is cleaning herself all the time. Doctor said that cutting her fur will affect her psychologically, but we can give it a shot.

If you have any experience, advice or whatever considering the grooming or anything else, please help.

Once again thank you all so much for the advice and support!! We appreciate it more than you can imagine!!