12 week old meat rabbits dying

JHP Homestead

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I have a cage that was holding 5 ready-to-butcher meat rabbits. During the last 24 hours, 3 of these rabbits have died for unknown-to-me reasons.

They seem to be having some diarrhea and aren’t particularly interested in food, although they did eat a handful of grass yesterday.

We cut open the two that died today and didn’t see any liver spots to indicate coccidiosis. The one’s stomach and intestine contents were really watery and both had a lot of empty intestines.

They are fed pellets and some weedy grass hay that was baled off the edge of a field and has some briars and other weeds in it. I don’t think there’s anything that could be in the hay that could cause this. Or maybe there is?

Any ideas what disease/?? this could be and how to treat it or prevent it from spreading?

Thanks in advance!
 

Hens and Roos

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Had the rabbits been living in this cage prior to you losing 3 or did you move them to this cage? Reason I ask, is to see if they got stressed and that could have caused them to slow down/stop eating and drinking enough and they ended up experiencing GI Stasis(the slowdown or cessation of peristalsis of the intestine).
 

JHP Homestead

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Had the rabbits been living in this cage prior to you losing 3 or did you move them to this cage? Reason I ask, is to see if they got stressed and that could have caused them to slow down/stop eating and drinking enough and they ended up experiencing GI Stasis(the slowdown or cessation of peristalsis of the intestine).
They were moved to that cage a week ago.
 

JHP Homestead

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I went out there this morning and a 10 week old rabbit in a different cage was dead. And one of my senior bucks on the complete other side of the rabbitry doesn’t look very good.

The only thing I can find much info about treating is Coccidiosis. Could it be that even though there were no lesions on the intestines or liver? Is it safe to treat with Corid even if that’s not what it is?
 

mysunwolf

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Yes and yes, treat for cocci. Corid is safe, though some will do a course of liquid B complex vitamins in the water after treatment. Butcher any that are ready now. We have had this happen to our NZs and a good friend who had nice Silver Foxes. We've both lost large portions of litters this way.

Like I ranted about in another thread, cocci can get them even in raised wire. I've suspected that it's flies spreading it from the manure below, to the cages above, but that's just a guess.
 

B&B Happy goats

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Because we are in Florida, this year I am using corrid in the rabbits, chickens and goats water as prevention all summer, small dose but has been working well.
I agree about the flies helping carry, we have neighbors all around us with farm animals....nasty flies carry everything :sick
 
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