poopy smear…

[Moccasin]

For the last 2 weeks… I go into moccasins room and find smeared poop on the floor… like the soft poop she doesn’t eat sticks to her bottom and it somehow smears on the floor. like multiple times a day (2-3) had anyone experienced this? Its also gets stuck right out of her hole (I’m sorry to be descriptive, but I want to help her)

is this normal poopy bottom or is this a “i need to take her to the vet thing” she is acting happy, eating, normal, cheerful self. 

She has been eating less hay then I would like…but its always been hard to get her to eat timothy hay… but thats not new.

[litheandgraphic]

What’s the rest of her diet like? What kind of pellets and how much pellets is she getting a day? What kind / how many greens/veggies/treats?

The occasional cecal is normal, but you shouldn’t be seeing what sounds like smeared cecals this often. If the poop is more watery/looks like diarrhea or there’s a LOT of it, then that warrants a vet visit.

[Moccasin]

1 cup of Oxbow pellets, 2 huge leaves on romaine, handful of cilantro (her fav), handful of oats as a treat but her diet hasn’t changed…

its not watery… but only just recently do I find it smeared on the floor! I looked up other posts… maybe someone else expeinced this, but couldn’t find any regarding “smears on the floor”

[litheandgraphic]

Right, if anything, you’d want to lower the pellets and increase the veggies, and I would say you should slowly start to cut oats out of the diet altogether. Oats are not a recommended daily food due to their high starch content, which can cause digestive upsets, as can any grain with rabbits. If you decide not to completely get rid of the oats, then you will want to cut it down to a pinch every other day as opposed to a handful a day.

As for the pellets and veggies, I’d cut down the pellets to 1/4 of a cup, and make sure that she’s getting 1 cup of veggies per 3 lbs of her weight (so if she weighs 6 lbs = 2 cups of veggies a day).

Good luck!

[JackRabbit]

I find that with Moshi when he has too much salad (even one bite too much), so he gets the smallest salad of the three. He also has it if he eats any romaine (although my girls are fine with romaine). He never has anything smeared or dried on his butt though. Funny, I put a large ceramic tile in the bunny area and that’s where he will leave the smears now! (At least the fleece is poop free now!)

Maybe try adjusting the quantities of the diet items one at a time to see what helps. I’d definitely start with reducing (with the intent to eliminate) the oats.

[Megabunny]

Oh the old poopy butt…if that is what it is! Lots of hay. Then more hay. Whatever you can get her to eat. Actually, if it is poopy butt it wil be recommended to keep her on ONLY hay until it is gone for something like a week. But don’t SUDDENLY take her off everything else.

It hasn’t been that long since I went through that with my Gracie and I was not giving her too many greens unless they were dried. I should copy/paste some of these things somewhere to bring up again. I’m sure others I’ll jump in. And there are those who won’t agree with me. You have to find what works for your bunny.

Bam (don’t know if she’s on lately) got me through that. You can Google this problem though I could never follow it exactly, but it might take a couple of weeks or several months, but it does eventually get better. I have heard of oats being good for their fur coat, but I would have to question giving as many as you are. I know she’s a big girl, but that still sounds like way too much.

I dried cilantro (hung it from a rack for about a week) and dried tons of Kale in the oven…stank up the house. Apple leaves, if you live around any, should be getting dried this time of year right on the trees. I know lots of people will say fresh, but I found, from talking with Bam, that dried things worked way better on her tummy. But then I recall you having bladder trouble with Mocassin so I’m not sure if that could complicate her bladder.

I feel your pain, believe me! It’s messy and wreaks to high Heaven. I hope it’s not actually poopy butt. Maybe taking out oats for awhile will make a difference. I was out there buying all kinds of hay to keep mine eating that as much as absolutely possible. Best of luck to y and that cutie!

[Moccasin]

Thank you SO much. I will play around with her diet and try mostly Hay! So funny I thought fresh veggies where the problem not the pellets! I was wrong

thank you!! (and also for remembering me )

[Megabunny]

I can’t forget Moccasin for some reason!!
Anyway, there have been others who disagree with fresh veggies being the problem, but Bam and I found that was what worked for ours…dry food, I mean. Everyone will say feed mostly hay for that. Good luck. Hope you find a solution cuz that is so nasty. I don’t know about you, but I would love to get a friend for my guy, but he’s been enough expense and he’s so big that I doubt I will have another anytime soon, and I feel soooo guilty every time I hear people talk about how much happier they are with a second one. 🙁

[JackRabbit]

I’m afraid my bonded pair would be miserable without each other. They truly love each other. If one comes out for play time and the other doesn’t follow, the one that went goes back to retrieve the one that stayed. They are never too far from each other. Being bonded with another bun is all they’ve ever known.

However, Kieko would be happier if the M&Ms were just “gone”! She doesn’t like to share us but she doesn’t want to “play bunny” with them either. She prefers to pretend she’s human. Besides, we never steal food from her mouth, we never bite her butt or nip at her if she does something we don’t like, we never demand to be groomed, we don’t try to hump her, we always let her choose how we play, we cuddle and pet her on her terms, and we give treats!

I believe bunnies really do crave companionship, but can be just as happy if that companion is a human. You should not feel bad about keeping a well cared for and loved bunny as a single bun.

[Bam]

I agree with Megabunny on the hay, poopy butt is most often caused by an imbalance in the gut flora and what’s important is to restore a healthy microbial flora and this is done by feeding the bunny lots of hay. Grassy hay is exactly what a bunny needs. It’s low in calories, i e low in starch and protein and fats, high in fibre, so they can eat lots of it and eat almost all the time, which is what rabbits naturally do (horses too.)
Sometimes fresh greens that a bunny is not used to or suddenly gets a bigger amount of or for some reason is sensitive to may cause poopy butt. With Bam, carrots are a no-no. He can eat apple, but carrots won’t work.

Bam had poopy butt for a very long time because I was ignorant and stupid and fed him a too rich and totally inappropriate diet (bunny-muesli, the biggest no-no of no-nos there is save “yoghurt drops”) and it took many months to cure him. I basically cut out all pellets and all treats and only fed him hay and fresh greens. It was 6 months before he was all right – I now consider him all right because he’s been well for such a long time and when he gets a tad of poopy butt (very rarely now) and when he does, 24 hours of hay and water only clears it right up.

It doesn’t necessarily take such a long time for a bunny’s stomach to right itself, but it may, just want to say that because a bunny owner is always impatient for the little darling to get well =) If your bunny is otherwise fine, I don’t think you need a vet for this since the remedy is hay. And more hay. Try to find a hay your bunny likes. This may not be super easy. You can top it with some dry leaves etc (there are hay-toppers available on f ex the BB store) to make it more enticing. Other than that, hunger is the best spice as they say (although don’t ever starve a bunny. Always provide hay and water 24/7).

Megabunny, I haven’t dared ask about Gracie. Is she still with you?

[Megabunny]

Thanks for asking, Bam. Sadly, Gracie died one Saturday. She appeared fine in the morning, was not right by noon and was gone an hour or less after that. She was the very sweetest, snuggliest rabbit we’ve ever had. Maybe partly because she was always so sickly. But Gus really loved being around her and I’d hoped to spay her and put her in with him 24/7 eventually. It was so sad.

[Bam]

Megabunny, I’m so so sorry. I remember it didn’t look good at all, but you really went out of your way to help her. She must have loved you so much for taking such great care of her.

Binky free, Gracie.

[JackRabbit]

So sorry about Gracie. I’m always afraid to ask that kind of thing too for fear of bringing on sad memories.

You mentioned dried veggies ….. don’t dried things like cilantro just crumble? Trying to figure out how to work that. I bought a dehydrator to dehydrate carrot chips for bunny treats and it would be nice to use it for something else too (since I’ve banned the hubby from using it to make jerky — I bought it for the *bunnies*!!!! ha ha ha)

[Bam]

Some dried stuff crumble, like oregano. It really varies. If it crumbles, my bunnies will still eat it. The first winter I had Bam I had no dried veg at all so I gave him mint leaves bought as mint tea. It was all little flakes but Bam devoured it.

I have gone by trial and error, stuff that dries well is f ex dandelion, ground elder, kale, hawthorn, apple, hazel and willow leaves, apple peel, apple slices and Jerusalem artichoke leaves. But even if mint crumbles, it still makes a great hay-topper and the scent is just lovely of course. Yarrow is useless though, it crumbles into molecules. Fresh it’s a big fav with my buns, but it completely disintegrates in the drier.

I store my dried leaves loosely in 6 litre ziplock bags. I dry it till it is perfectly dry, or it won’t keep.

[Megabunny]

I haven’t bought a dehydrator. Maybe I should. I only did it for Gracie, but I think Gus could use some hay toppers. The oven was good for the kale…although the oven here at our new house broke and, well, that’s a long boring story but I’ve wondered if I could dry dandelions, too, and if it might smell a bit better. One of my nice neighbors said I could borrow her oven if I wanted to bake anything. Ha ha. Maybe I should send over Kale! Love this Southern hospitality, but that might push my luck!
Thanks for all the kind words about Gracie. For a bunny that was so smelly and dirty and lots of work to keep clean, she was worth every bit of the effort. She and Gus would have made a terrific pair.

[Bam]

I think you could dry dandelion greens on newspaper in the kitchen or someplace else in the house where there’s room. They dry quickly.

[Moccasin]

I think I figured out what happened with Moccasin!
I cleaned behind the couch and I found an empty bag of CARROTS! sometimes when I go in the fridge while its closing she sneaks her way in and pulls things down. I BET it was the carrots because I do not feed her carrots.

Dried herbs! I gotta do that. I bet she would like to eat her hay more often

[JackRabbit]

Hmmmm . . . bunny stole bag of carrots from fridge, hid them from mom, got poopy smear leftovers. Yep, that’ll do it! (Reminds me of a kid with a bag full of Halloween candy!)

[Bam]

Ah, terrible bunny-child! Steals candy and hurries to stuff himself with it until he gets sick! Once Yohio found a bag of jelly-beans in a backpack and pulled the whole bag out and was on his way to a safe place where he could dig into it when I (luckily) happened to see him. Another time he “found” a basket of apples in the hallway and ate half of a big apple before I noticed. Bunnies are not to be trusted around food =)

A good thing though, poopy butt explained =)

[JackRabbit]

Bam, that is too funny! My bunnies have tried to jerk treat bags out of my hands, but they’ve never tried to be stealth bunny and sneak off with anything!

[Megabunny]

That is all way too funny! I’m so glad you found a reason for Moccassin’s GI upset. It really is like a kid with a whole bag of candy!

Thanks Bam. I’m going to try that drying for the dandelions and cilantro w/ newspapers. Thanks!

[Megabunny]

I had to share that story with my hubby and he thought that (and Yohio w/ the jelly beans) was nuts…a bunny getting into the fridge!

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