White Nasal discharge.

[Jayzandra]

Hi, I just bought a trio of rabbits a few weeks ago. The day after I brought them home I noticed a white nasal discharge from one of the does. I figured maybe from the new bedding or perhaps a cold. The next day it was gone. Then I saw it again yesterday. So I did some googling and what I read kind of freaked me out because I have children that like to play with the rabbits and I also have other livestock. Chickens, pigs, goats, etc.
What should I do? Would it be easier to just cull all of them, sanitize, and start over? I'm kind of panicking at this point.
Thank you!

 

[Hopalong Causually]

I'm sure there will be much better advice coming here in short order. I think the first and most important thing you could do right now is separate those three rabbits from your others and quarantine the rabbit with the discharge. Then you can decide what treatment, if any, is warranted or proper. Let's hope it's just an allergic reaction to some change in its environment. It might be a good time for the children to learn that playing with all the rabbits at this time could spread a possible disease from one to the other and might not be good for them, either. I had one rabbit with such a discharge. It did not turn out well.

 

[DutchBunny03]

It is most likely snuffles. It is contagious to humans, but only through a bite wound. Just to be safe, keep the infected rabbit away from your kids. Keep the infected rabbit away from the others, and quarentine it. Wash your hands after handing the infected rabbit and before handling healthy rabbits. Clean completely all rabbit housing. Snuffles, the infection of the tear ducts, is highly contagious to other rabbits. It can wipe out a few rabbits in a week. Good luck!

 

[Bunnylady]

I did some googling and what I read kind of freaked me out because I have children that like to play with the rabbits and I also have other livestock. Chickens, pigs, goats, etc.
What should I do? Would it be easier to just cull all of them, sanitize, and start over? I'm kind of panicking at this point.
Thank you!

Unless by "cull all of them" you mean to kill every kind of livestock on your place, and start over with some that were raised in some sort of sterile laboratory somewhere (good luck with that!), chances are, you won't be able to prevent your children from being exposed. Snuffles is pretty much synonymous with Pasteurella (a bacterium) for most people. Pasteurella is very common in a lot of types of livestock; if the kids aren't exposed to it by the rabbits, they probably will be by something else. But unless one of your children is severely immune compromised, the chances of them "catching" any type of infection from this are remote. To further complicate things, the white snot really only indicates some type of infection; it may not be Pasteurella at all. I remember reading a study many years ago where a researcher got some commercial breeders to bring her every animal they had that came down with "snuffles" so she could run cultures on the causative organisms, and she found that about 3/4 of the cases were caused by bacteria like Streptococcus that humans carry normally (and harmlessly) - in other words, the rabbits had caught these infections from associating with people!

A lot of the time, the rabbit has been carrying the infective organism for ages without showing any symptoms; it's only when some stress has reduced the animal's immune function that symptoms appear. Sometimes, these animals will clear up with treatment - or even without - and then, when stressed again, the symptoms show up again. Whatever the actual cause of the infection, and whether or not it responds to treatment, I would be a bit leery of using this particular animal in a breeding program; she may not have the most robust immune system.

 

[Jayzandra]

Thank you everyone.
By cull all of them, I was talking about the rabbits. They are the only rabbits I have and I bought all three from the same place.
If it's Pateurella, how dangerous is it to the other livestock?

 

[Bunnylady]

If it's Pateurella, how dangerous is it to the other livestock?

That depends on which strain it is. Most strains are pretty much harmless, but just as you can have "black sheep" in any family, there are some strains that cause problems, and some that can be really nasty. Just like E. coli, most strains are no big deal, but some may be even be lethal (although that may be only to a certain type of animal).

 

[babsbag]

If you have goats you can vaccinate them for Pasteurella pneumonia.

 

[Jayzandra]

Well, she just gave birth to 7 kits. The guy I got them from said they might already be bred. I guess she was! Still waiting to find out about testing from a friend who works at the vet.