Why are rabbits dying and what to do?
For the body of domestic rabbits, even the slightest disease can become fatal, especially if it is of viral origin. As a result, the animals, which felt fine the night before, die in the morning, one after the other, and the owner has no idea why the rabbits are dying.
Why do rabbits die and die?
So that such problems do not occur when breeding pussies, you should exercise constant control over the pets, and at the slightest suspicion of malaise, move the sick pet from relatives and immediately begin treatment.
The main causes of death
The most common cause of death is improper maintenance of rabbits, which is carried out in violation of almost all sanitary standards. If you do not have enough time to clean up the cages in a timely manner and replace the dirty water in the drinking bowl with clean water, be prepared that the health of the pets will deteriorate. The consequences can be very dire for the entire livestock. An important factor contributing to the loss of vitality of individuals is irregular and unbalanced nutrition.
But often rabbits begin to die in attentive owners, despite regular proper feeding, timely cleaning and disinfection of cells. The reason for this is viruses and infections that are in the air in large numbers in the summer. The carrier of such diseases can become not only another animal suffering from it, but also an insect.
Most often, both adult rabbits and young animals get sick:
- VGBK fever,
- Myxomatosis,
- Pasteurellosis
- Coccidosis
- Flatulence.
Let's take a closer look at each of them in order to make the correct diagnosis and understand why your rabbit died.
VGBK
VGBK, that is, viral hemorrhagic disease of rabbits, is susceptible to individuals over two months of age. The disease proceeds in the form of a severe infectious type of fever, transmitted through wool, meat, feces and through the air. In most cases, even vaccination does not help save the animal from death, but the worst thing is that at the initial stages the disease is asymptomatic.
And when rabbits begin to refuse to eat, become overly nervous, quickly lose strength and become inactive, jerking their paws convulsively and throwing their heads back, it is too late, the disease takes on an acute form and take some kind of salutary action.
In animals suffering from fever, the whole body aches from pain, and the nose bleeds, which is why they so often throw their heads back. Between the moment of infection and the onset of death, it usually takes 24 to 72 hours. First, the liver is affected and the liver is destroyed, then the lungs swell, oxygen ceases to enter the body and the rabbit dies.
With the timely introduction of a special vaccine to pets at the age of one and a half months, fever can be prevented.In principle, so that the rabbits do not die, you can enter the medicine later, the main thing before the infection has already occurred. The vaccine is valid for exactly one year, then re-vaccination is required.
At the moment, drugs for VGBK have not been invented, although there are cases in practice when individual individuals recover on their own without drugs for unknown reasons.
Myxomatosis
The carriers of myxomantosis or distemper, as it is customary to call this disease among rabbit breeders, are insects. Even one mosquito bite can provoke profuse mucous discharge from the nose and eyes.
It is important to identify the infection in time in order to prevent infection of healthy individuals living with an infected animal. Plague is especially dangerous for young rabbits, who die from it quickly and suddenly.
In addition to the main symptom - mucus, you can notice swelling and nodular swelling in the area of the nose, ears and eyes in a sick rabbit. The duration of the incubation period in different specific cases can be from two to twenty days, only then the manifestation of visible signs of myxomatosis occurs. From this moment on, the development of the disease proceeds very rapidly and death occurs in a maximum of two weeks (in young animals, it is twice as fast).
The spread of distemper occurs at a frantic rate, and if you notice one infected rabbit among the livestock, then most likely the infection has already been transmitted to others, only at the incubation stage, so that the brood does not die, measures must be taken urgently.
There are no effective methods of treatment, but so that the pets do not die, you can always prevent the disease with the help of timely vaccination at home. There are special associated drugs that can immediately protect against HBV and distemper, which eliminates the need for double vaccination.
Pasteurellosis
Another very dangerous disease of an infectious origin, causing massive death of livestock within 48 hours. Among the visible symptoms are noted, especially a runny nose, sneezing, decreased appetite, and sometimes a complete refusal to eat.
If the diseases discussed above have become known relatively recently, then scientists have been struggling with pasteurellosis for quite a long time. It is worth noting that the mortality rate in the latter is less than that of the previous ones. Namely, from 20 to 70 percent. The result largely depends on a balanced diet and compliance with sanitary conditions.
The disease has acute and chronic forms:
In the first case, the animal begins a fever, provoking shortness of breath, runny nose and sneezing. After a certain time (from one hour to several days), the rabbits die.
In the second case, the symptoms are similar to rhinitis or conjunctivitis, which makes timely diagnosis at home difficult. In patients, loose stools appear, in some cases purulent abscesses are observed under the skin. After two months, pus breaks out. With the timely initiation of drug treatment, mortality can be avoided altogether.
Coccidiosis
The disease is caused by the simplest unicellular parasites that affect the liver tissue and the organs of the gastrointestinal tract. By default, each rabbit is a carrier of coccidosis, but in the clinical form, pathology is extremely rare. On the other hand, it is very bright, so there are never any problems with diagnostics.
A sick animal has severe abdominal distension, which looks very unnatural against the background of an emaciated body. In addition, a decrease in appetite is noticed, and the rabbit is losing weight before our eyes.
Carriers of coccytosis are coccidial oocytes present in contaminated food and water. In healthy animals with a strong immune system, they usually have enough of their own strength to neutralize the action of parasites without the help of drugs. Therefore, the disease rarely becomes clinical.
If, after slaughter, you notice that the rabbit's liver and intestines are all covered with dotted light nodular growths, it means that during his lifetime he suffered from coccytosis and it is not recommended to eat such meat.
Treatment of the disease is carried out with antibiotics, such as Baycox. To avoid overdose, read the instructions for use. But first of all, care should be taken to improve the conditions for keeping pets. The cells must be sterile and not overcrowded.
Flatulence
From bloated intestines, animals die most often. This organ in rabbits is especially sensitive and any malfunctions lead to serious problems, which are sometimes impossible to cope with.
The cause of the disease is a sharp change in the flora of the digestive system. This can happen for several reasons, for example, if the food has high humidity and juiciness, to which the animal was not previously accustomed.
Signs of flatulence, from which rabbits often die: apathy and refusal to eat. Due to the fact that a new portion of fresh food does not arrive, the previously eaten is not pushed out, which means that fermentation begins right in the intestine and its walls swell. As a result, the esophagus is filled with bacteria that destroy its walls and lead to the death of the rabbit.
Other causes leading to the death of the livestock
There are less popular, but equally dangerous reasons why rabbits die. For example, a decorative dwarf rabbit can die even from loneliness. Animals at any age can pick up scabies mites that parasitize around the ears. Insects dig into the skin and begin to drink blood, which causes severe itching in rabbits, and hair falls out of the ears.
From constant torment, the pussies become lethargic, almost stop eating, lose their vitality and die after a while. To cope with the problem of what rabbits die from, you can use modern drugs.
Females develop infectious mastitis in the nipple area during breastfeeding. The wounds appear from the bites of young rabbits with sharp newly erupted teeth. If the cell is cleaned out of time, an infection gets into the wounds, and then, spreading throughout the body through infected blood, the females die. That is why the cages with newborn rabbits must be kept very clean.
Why are the rabbits dying?
Newly born small monthly rabbits, feeding on mother's milk, are protected from diseases, since they have a fairly strong immune system. But even your own mother is unable to protect newborns from all diseases, there are several reasons why rabbits die.
Most often, small rabbits die early from hypothermia, due to the low air temperature in the nests. Cubs literally grit their teeth from the cold and can freeze to death even in summer, not to mention how often rabbits die in winter, especially in cold regions.
To protect the young, cover the nests with one of the materials specially designed for this (instead, you can use dry herbs), and on top with mother fluff (required).
Another reason why the bunny died is hunger. Sometimes a rabbit for the first two or three days after birth simply does not have milk, which is so necessary for their babies, because of this they become helpless and quickly die. To control milkiness, you need to weigh the rabbits before and after eating. Solution to the problem:
- start feeding the female more abundantly,
- transfer her cubs to a healthy rabbit for upbringing for the necessary time to restore the mother's milk functions.
Methods for the treatment and prevention of diseases
- It is impossible to get rid of HBV and myxomatosis, therefore, prophylactic vaccination of rabbits at an early age is necessary. As a consequence, vaccinations must be done every year.Grafted rabbits and rabbits live to a ripe old age, but it is absolutely pointless to treat sick individuals and they live for a maximum of a month after infection.
- You can get rid of pasteurellosis with one of the antibiotics and B vitamins. If the disease is detected in the first month, the chances of recovery are much greater.
- To eliminate coccidosis, they use trichopolum, sulfadimezin, and chemcoccid. At the same time, it is very important to constantly monitor the well-being of the pet and inspect their skin every day.
Now you know what to do if the number of rabbits has become dramatically different - not native, painful.