GI Statis?

[Bonsai]

The past few days, I've been seeing mishapen, strung-together poos in Heidi's cage. For the first couple days I thought "okay, its probably because I tried introducing cilantro. I'll cut back on it". Today, she is still having the strung-together poos and they are mishapen still. Most of her food is comprised of hay; she gets 1/4 cup of pellets a day and as of right now, no greens whatsoever. She will not eat any - cilantro is the only one meriting her glance and I'm not feeding it for the time being seeing as she may or may not be having a reaction to it. Parsley was disdainfully sniffed at and everything else gets chucked out the cage.

I started by feeding her just one stalk of cilantro. She was fine prior to the cilantro and now she is having symptoms of GI Statis. I also recently changed her hay type. She used to get orchard grass and is now getting "DuMor Timothy Hay". She seems to love it and eats at least a heaping bowl every day. I have come up with a method to make her minimize pellets - feed pellets late in the day but leave the hay all day. This seems to work, it didn't work well the other way around. She now eats her hay like its going out of style.

Anywho, I have never had a sick bun before. Heidi does not act sick. She is not any less active than she usually is (she's not very active to begin with...) and the only diet changes have been her hay and the attempted cilantro. She seems to be consuming a small margin more water than normal but nothing too alarming since it IS hot here. She has frozen 2liters around the clock; I have 5 I alternate out so the only time one is thawed is during the night. Soon as the sun is up, she has a new one.

What should I be doing? Tomorrow morning, I am going to bring her into our yard where the dogs usually romp and keep them indoors while I let her have some time out there. Perhaps the new venue will encourage her to run around a bit more... Would it hurt for her to snack on the grass in the yard? My floors inside are linoleum and she is actually petrified of them and won't step on them so I don't think bringing her inside would do much good - we have no carpet. So the only option I have is in the yard that's fenced in since our playpen was recently "borrowed".

To recap: Heidi has mishapen, strung-together poos but has no loss of appetite or water consumption; she was recently tried on cilantro and when the poos began, I took them away. She is not any less friendly/chipper. I am greeted whenever I come to her cage, today she took to humping her 2liter "Twister" as I was removing it, and all behaviors are contradicting everything I think of. She is not grinding her teeth, "bunching up", refusing food (She stuck her head into her food bowl the second I put hay in this morning, even though she hadn't been made do without for any length of time...) or anything like that.

The only difference I can think of that is maybe bothering her is that I decreased her pellets recently. I was giving her 1/2 cup and I reduced to 1/4. Could this have caused it? I did so gradually... Could it also be the hay change?

Maybe I've caught statis early? What should I do to keep it from getting worse and help my baby girl get better? I feel like a terrible bunny owner right now, I have no idea what I have done wrong and no idea where to go from here, but I really want her to get better.

Should I take pellets away and give her exclusively hay and water? I know the fiber helps get statis to go away but would the sudden lack of pellets cause her to worsen? She ate up all her pellets today in the time it took me to go get groceries and munched hay; every morning when I check on her for the first time (before I even have breakfast, haha), her bowl is empty even though it WAS heaped with hay.

Is it possible that the increase in fiber (she barely touched hay before, still not sure what spurred this interest in hay for her) is causing her GI to start flushing everything out? I'm not sure if that's how that works... I am just so stumped, I don't know what I have done wrong.

Any help and input whatsoever would be so amazing right now. I'm scared out of my mind and I am so afraid I'll lose her if it takes a turn for the worse...

 

[DUSTBUNNY-CLYDE]

It just happened with dustbunny!!! the strung together poos are probably just hair ingested and they are passing in the poos. I would offer a little canned pumpkin, put a few bowls of water out and give tons of hay. Just offer a little pellets. brush her real well everyday!!! Just keep a close eye on her!!! It took Dustbunny a few weeks to get back to normal!!! best wishes!!!

 

[JBun]

It sounds like she's going through a molt. That's why you are seeing the strung together fecal poop. It is a fairly normal thing to see when they are molting. You just want to try and limit the amount of fur ingested from grooming, as much as possible. If there is a lot of fur ingested, it can also cause the poop to become misshapen. Best thing for this is a lot of brushing, to remove as much loose fur as possible, and lots of hay(which it sounds like she is eating). The coarser the hay, the better, as the fiber helps keep the digestive tract moving, and helps prevent the fur from causing too much of a gut slowdown and a blockage. Giving her cilantro won't hurt at all either, as long as it is something she is used to eating and doesn't seem to cause digestive upset for her. It doesn't sound like she has any symptoms of stasis. With stasis, you will usually see a decrease in fecal poop size, or it stopping altogether. If the pooping stops, that's when you will see signs of pain and discomfort, and loss of appetite. So just brush her and get that loose fur out, ensure she continues to eat lots of hay, and always make sure she has water and is drinking it, and she should be fine. The less fur you are seeing in the strung together poop, the better.

http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/GI_diseases/drop/Drp_en.htm
http://www.veterinarypartner.com/Content.plx?P=A&S=0&C=0&A=484#.UZ8FPbx7LTo.twitter

 

[Azerane]

I would agree that she is going through a molt. Brush her as much as you can to limit what she's ingesting, she's going to be drinking more water because of it. The fact that she is eating a lot of hay is good as JBun has mentioned, because of all that fibre. I believe you can give papaya pieces/treats to help digest it, but I'm not sure actually how well that works.

 

[Bonsai]

Thank you all for your responses! I believe it is molt, too, as I checked on her this morning and her hay bowl was empty again and she dived back in as soon as the bowl was put down. I made a squee sound when the first thing she went after was hay - not pellets! I decided to give them early today just so if she is, somehow, going to start going into stasis, at least she'll have pellets in her.

I put in a water fountain for her today, complete with some ice cubes. I am hoping it encourages her to drink more water; she drinks about 1/5 of her bottle a day, licks the water off her 2liters as they melt, and hopefully will at least try to drink from the fountain.

She is losing her winter fur, I've combed some of it out but a lot of it seems to be on her bum, which she is reluctant to let me brush lol. I surreptitiously pluck little tufts sticking out when I get the chance (loose fur, I'd never pull her fur, and its light plucks) so she can't consume the fur, at least. From her midsection forward, she is pretty sleek but her back end is a little patchy. I hope she's nearly done with her molt - I'll be surely relieved when she is!

I'm still going to let her run around today (and probably everyday, weather allowing) but maybe later in the evening. She already seemed kinda "it is too hot for this" when I did my first check; I hope the running around will help her move the fur out faster. The sooner she is producing clean poops, the happier I will be!

Thank you all again, I was really relieved to read the responses before I went to check on Heidi. As a reward for your help, here's my "Bunny Overlord" munching her hay this morning: