Peqaboo series
Gastrointestinal stasis is one of the most common rabbit emergencies, where the gut slows or stops. This guide explains how a hay-first diet, hydration, exercise, and daily poop-watching prevent it, and how to recognise the early signs before a slowdown becomes life-threatening.
Older rabbits often develop arthritis, which shows up as stiffness, reluctance to hop, and a dirty bottom rather than obvious limping. This guide explains the signs, home changes that ease painful joints, and when your rabbit needs a rabbit-savvy vet for pain relief.
Rabbits process calcium unusually, so thick, chalky urine and bladder sludge are common. This article explains normal versus abnormal rabbit urine, how diet and hydration help, and the signs of a urinary problem that means it is time to see a rabbit-savvy vet.
Encephalitozoon cuniculi is a common microscopic parasite that many rabbits carry silently, but in some it attacks the brain, kidneys and eyes. Learn the warning signs like head tilt and hind-leg weakness, how vets diagnose it, and why early treatment matters.
Crusty ears, head shaking, and scratching often mean ear mites or an ear infection in rabbits. This article explains how to tell the difference from a healthy ear, why you must never pick off the crusts, and when your rabbit needs a vet for safe treatment.
A rabbit's teeth grow for life, and when the back molars wear unevenly they form sharp spurs that cut the tongue and cheek. This article helps you spot the early signs , dropped food, drooling, weight loss , explains why hay is the best prevention, and stresses when a rabbit needs urgent veterinary care.
A lump on your rabbit is rarely simple. Rabbit abscesses hold thick pus in a tough capsule that antibiotics can't reach, so they almost never drain or heal on their own. Learn where to check, why surgery usually beats pills, and the red flags that mean go to a vet now.
Snuffles is a common rabbit respiratory infection causing sneezing, nasal discharge, and noisy breathing. This article explains the signs, why a runny nose is never just a cold in rabbits, and why prompt treatment from a rabbit-savvy vet is essential to prevent it becoming chronic or fatal.
Sore hocks, or pododermatitis, are pressure sores on the underside of a rabbit's back feet caused by hard flooring, damp, and excess weight. Caught early they are very manageable. Learn how to spot the early stages, fix the causes, and know when a vet is needed.
Weepy eyes and a runny nose in rabbits are signs, not diagnoses. This article explains the common causes, from dental disease to blocked tear ducts and infection, how to tell mild from serious, and when your rabbit needs a rabbit-savvy vet rather than home care.
Learn how to perform a quick, one-minute morning health check on your rabbit. Because rabbits instinctively hide illness, these 12 daily checks will help you spot early signs of pain, dental disease, and life-threatening GI stasis before it is too late.
Gastrointestinal stasis (GI stasis) in rabbits is a silent, life-threatening emergency. Learn how to recognize the early warning signs, administer immediate first aid, and follow our step-by-step action plan to save your rabbit's life.
Rabbits are highly sensitive to heat and can quickly develop fatal heatstroke at temperatures as low as 28°C. Learn why they cannot sweat or pant, how to recognize the early signs of heat stress, and the exact steps to cool them down safely using air conditioning, tiles, and frozen bottles.
A rabbit that stops eating is an emergency until proven otherwise. Act the same day; do not wait for tomorrow.
Most stings in rabbits cause local pain and swelling, and what makes them dangerous is location rather than allergy. A rabbit's larynx is locked into the back of the nasal chamber, so it cannot breathe through its mouth, and swelling of the nose, muzzle or throat closes the only route air has. This guide sets out the t
Water is not a side issue in a rabbit: dry gut contents stop moving, and concentrated urine turns into sludge because rabbits dump surplus calcium through the kidneys. This guide covers why bowls beat sipper bottles, how to measure real intake with a kitchen scale, how to build a baseline that makes a change meaningful
Blowfly eggs laid on a soiled rear hatch within hours in warm weather, and the larvae tunnel sideways under the skin so the damage is always larger than the visible hole. This guide covers why flystrike kills through absorbed toxins even after the maggots are removed, the underlying causes that gave the rabbit a dirty
Rabbits cannot sweat and cannot pant effectively, so they shed heat through the blood vessels of their ears and stop being able to when the air is as warm as they are. This guide gives the cool-down order that works, why immersion and ice make things worse, why a summer collapse must have its rear checked for flystrike
A rabbit sharing a home with a cat or dog faces an attack risk and a chronic stress risk, and most households plan only for the first. Covers why any cat contact is a same-day emergency, how chased rabbits die of shock and self-inflicted spinal fracture, how stress causes gut stasis, and how to zone the home properly.
There is no correct bath frequency for a rabbit, because water baths cause chilling, panic injuries and skin damage. The real question is why the bottom is dirty. This guide separates uneaten caecotrophs from urine scald and true diarrhoea, links each to diet, teeth, joints, weight and bladder disease, explains the fly
Flakes along a rabbit's back are usually fur mites appearing because the rabbit has stopped grooming there, and the reason is normally dental pain, excess weight or reduced mobility. This guide reads the distribution of scurf, separates fur mites from ear mites, ringworm, moulting and fleas, flags the zoonotic risk and
Rabbit teeth grow for the whole of the animal's life and are worn down by chewing, not cleaned by brushing. Home dental care is a hay-first diet plus a weekly face, chin and appetite check that catches malocclusion and spurs early.
Rabbit teeth grow for life and are worn down by the sideways grinding that only coarse forage demands, so a rabbit eating fewer hay wears its teeth less and the disease accelerates itself. The early signs are quiet: hay lasting longer, selective eating, a damp chin, caecotrophs stuck to the rear, a coat that has stoppe
Rabbit eyes are large, exposed and easily injured, and the most damaging thing an owner can do is reach for the wrong drops. This guide covers the immediate response, the do-not list including why steroid products can cost the eye, what each sign actually means from corneal ulcer to retrobulbar abscess and myxomatosis,
Rabbits do not get diagnosed with food allergies, and running a dog-style elimination diet on one is dangerous because the fibre you would remove is what keeps the gut moving. This guide explains the caecal fermentation behind most food reactions, the dental and mite causes behind the rest, and how to test a food prope
A rabbit's gut is a continuous flow system, so a slowdown becomes an emergency within hours. This guide covers how to listen to both flanks and build a baseline, how to read dropping size, number and mucus, what changes by breed, age and season, and the critical difference between stasis and a physical obstruction, whe
A visible limp in a rabbit is late-stage pain, and the urgent risk is the gut stasis that follows it. How to read the gait, sort nail injury from fracture from spinal disease, and decide whether this is a today problem or a now problem.
More rabbits are killed by medicines given with good intentions than by anything else in a household cupboard. This guide explains why a hindgut fermenter's caecal microbiome makes penicillin-family antibiotics lethal by mouth while the same drug is used safely by injection, why fipronil spot-ons must never be used, wh
Rabbits ovulate in response to mating, so there is no infertile window and a doe can conceive again within hours of giving birth. This covers how to tell true pregnancy from a false one and from the gut stasis that mimics both, how to care for a pregnant doe, why a doe who ignores her nest all day is behaving normally,
Rabbits have no paw pads. The underside of the foot is skin covered by fur, and it breaks down when it meets hard, wet or abrasive flooring. Sore hocks starts as thinning fur and ends, if ignored, as infection reaching bone. It is caught with a weekly look at the feet and fixed mainly by changing the floor.
Assisted feeding keeps a rabbit's gut supplied while a vet treats the cause. How to tell stasis from an obstruction, what formula to use and what to avoid, the technique that prevents aspiration, and the two numbers that show whether it is working.
Healthy acclimatised rabbits handle cold well; what kills them is wet, wind and a frozen water supply that stops them drinking and then eating, with gut stasis following within hours. This guide covers the winter coat and fermentation heat that keep rabbits warm, the hazards ranked, hypothermia stage by stage including
Do not splint a rabbit. Rabbit skin tears, pressure sores form within hours, and the restraint needed to apply a splint is the very thing that fractures rabbit spines. This guide covers why a rabbit can break its own back with a kick, the differentials for sudden hind limb weakness, correct lifting and transport, how t
Neither of these viral diseases can be treated once it takes hold, so the whole answer is prevention. This guide covers what myxoma virus and rabbit haemorrhagic disease actually do, why RHDV2 differs from the classic strain and why cover against one is not cover against the other, the transmission routes that reach a
A rabbit that bites a live cable faces three injuries on three different clocks: the heart in the first seconds, fluid in the lungs over the next day and a half, and a mouth burn that reaches its true size days later. This covers making the scene safe, what to look for hour by hour, how to tell an electrical injury fro
A rabbit that has gone quiet is not resting. Rabbits hide illness until they can no longer compensate, and because the gut of a hindgut fermenter is not designed to stop, a rabbit that is not eating is an emergency measured in hours. Owners cannot reliably take a rabbit's temperature at home, so appetite, droppings and
A rabbit's tear duct passes directly beside the root of the upper incisor, so when teeth fail to wear down on a low-hay diet the elongating root blocks the duct and tears run down the face. Covers the full differential list from dacryocystitis and corneal ulcer to E. cuniculi, thymoma and myxomatosis, how to clean the
