Rabbit eye infection and what to do?

[Smoresthebunny]

My rabbits eye hasn’t been doing to good lately, he’s a Holland/mini lop mix and is about 3 years old and we noticed yesterday that his eye was looking a bit goopy but dismissed it thinking that he just had a bit of hay stuck in his eye. Today, I just went to check on him and his eye was almost swollen shut to the point that I thought he was sleeping, until I looked to his other side and found the other eye completely open. It has been like this all day, during his eating playing and sleeping times as well. We don’t have a vet for him and it would be hard for us (due to the area we live in) to find a vet and get him checked out, he is also skittish and it would be near impossible to apply eye drops to his eyes ourselves. Is this an emergency that we must take him to a faraway vet for or is there a simple treatment for it, and are these symptoms of a rabbit eye infection? Please help. Thank you

 

[Smoresthebunny]

Update: we put a warm towel saturated with salty water on his eye and it seemed to have opened up a bit

 

[JBun]

Wiping with a warm wet clean cloth can help get the eye open, but it's not going to correct the problem with the eye. It sounds like your rabbit has an eye infection, possibly conjunctivitis. White sticky discharge and inflammation are clinical signs of this. If left untreated, it will just get worse, with the infection possibly spreading.

Ophthalmic antibiotic eye drops are the minimum that's needed to treat this, possibly systemic rabbit safe antibiotics, anti inflammatories, and if the condition becomes painful enough to affect your rabbits appetite, regular syringe feeds will also be necessary. If the correct rabbit safe antibiotic eye drops/ointment isn't available otc where you're located, the only option to properly get this treated is get your rabbit to a knowledgeable rabbit vet right away. But even if you can get the proper antibiotic eye drops otc, I would still recommend finding a way to get your rabbit seen and treated by a knowledgeable rabbit vet if at all possible.

https://wabbitwiki.com/wiki/Conjunctivitis
https://wabbitwiki.com/wiki/Veterinary_emergencies
https://rabbit.org/veterinarians/