Rabbits anatomy

[simonne]

I have two female rabbits, molly and frankie. recently I have been worried about fly strike and have become a little obsessed and paranoid I think.

Yesterday I found poo stuck to molly's tail under her anus, quite alot was stuck and took me a while to break it up. I had to wash molly and she was so good she didn't struggle.

They are both very clever and not too bad temprement wise considering I haven't yet had the heart to have them neutered but I worry that I may be feeding them too much and can't clean properly, are too satisfied by the amount or type of food I feed them so are not eating the caecotrophs?

I read about fly strike and began to get really worried. Anyway to cut a long story short, I cleaned them both and had a look too check their bits.... I could see the vent then the rectum which looks similar to the male anyway but then noticed two slits either side of the rectum entrance.....I am confused. What are they, are they normal and am I worrying about nothing.

 

[Dublinperky]

this may do better in the imfanry (spelling??)

I hope that everthing is okay with them.

 

[kellyjade]

simonne wrote:

I could see the vent then the rectum which looks similar to the male anyway but then noticed two slits either side of the rectum entrance.....I am confused. What are they, are they normal and am I worrying about nothing.

They sound like the scent glands. They're normal, all bunnies have them. There's a couple threads going now about scent glands.

About the cecotropes, what are you feeding them, and how old are they? Too much protein may be causing the excess cecals.

 

[polly]

If you are getting that much excess cecals then I would definately be cutting down the amount you are feeding them. I would also look at your food is it pellets you are feeding and how big your rabbits are usually the bags will give you a feeding guideline on them.

Im going to move this over to teh nutrition section as you will probably get some more advice there Also if you can post your location it helps

 

[dquesnel]

I am going to echo what others have said- you might want to cut down on pellets or figure out if the rabbits are obese. It sounds as if they cannot reach their cecals and are sitting on them. Often if a rabbit does not want to eat its cecals, it is still able to pull them away without sitting on them. What type of food do you feed? Some veggies can cause excess cecals.

To address the fly strike issue- yes it can happen, but one thing you can do besides cleaning the boxes everyday is to add some vanilla extract to their drinking water, insects are repelled by it. You need to use pure extract, not the sugary stuff in grocery stores and just add a couple drops. Pepperment is also a repellant and you can use it to clean litterboxes. I find vinegar attracts some flies but wiping it with a few drop of peppermint can help. You can also get a mosquito net and hang it over where the boxes are.

Just to clear something up that I always wondered- Black house flies will NOT lay eggs on/eat a healthy rabbit. They might lay eggs in a littlerbox but these won't hatch in under 24 hours (by then you would have cleaned it anyway). Fruit flies and gnats are harmless. It is the green and blue bottle flies, and bot flies that you have to worry about- but don't make yourself sick about it either! Life is too short to worry about flies, especially if you are already doing what you can about it

 

[ec]

am wondering what kind of pellets youré feeding, and how large the servings are?