Hi! If anyone here uses the hamster hideout forum, you’ll know me from there it’s me! Burrow Beans! anyways, for the majority of you who don’t know me, I’ll briefly introduce myself. My screen name is Burrow Beans, and I have one dog, 5 cats, 3 hamsters, 2 rabbits, and a fish tank. I’ve used this forum before, but made an account to ask this question.
Basically, I adopted my dutch rabbit Panini in April of this year and then adopted a mini lop or holland lop, possibly a mix, I’m really not sure, from craigslist. We called him Avocado or Avi for short.
He was pretty underweight when we got him (September of this year), as I could feel his ribcage and spine very prominently. He was neutered and my exotics vet said he had a pretty good bill of health. He was 3.1 pounds when we got him, and is now 2.8. I’ve been feeding him timothy hay 24/7, 1/8 cup of pellets, and a cup and a half or so of veggies everyday. I’ve been giving him some papaya and other treats to help him put on some weight, but he’s still very thin. We took him into the vet and found out he had a respiratory infection- he took meds for that and that’s all cleared up now. However, he seems to have gotten fleas at the vet. He came back and I noticed flea dirt all over him. I gave both the bunnies the small cat dose of Advantage II the other day, and replaced their fleeces and other fabrics in their cage. They live in their own room (my bedroom) so I’m washing all my sheets today, and vacuuming the carpet with some natural homemade flea powder tomorrow.
However, Avi seems to have just gotten worse and worse. I picked up a flea comb today and spent about 20-30 minutes with him on my lap combing through to get all the dirt out. But he’s been doing this thing lately I’m very concerned about. Whenever I come into the room, both bunnies run over to me. He took one step, fell over on to his side, and couldn’t get back up. I had to scoop him up, and noticed his legs/genitals had either vegetable juice, water, or urine all over them.
He fell over on to the veggie plate yesterday and I had to pick him back up. He can’t jump on to the second level of his cage (it’s about a foot tall.)
I’m calling a different exotics vet today, because the last one was not helpful. I’ve gone to them for 2 hamsters and both bunnies. One hamster died halfway through his meds, and they sent Avi back with supposedly a clean bill of health (aside from his respiratory infection).
Any advice or help? He’s not an old bunny- the vet said he was probably around 1 1/2- 2 years old. I’m hesitant to take him to the vet as we’ve spent about $500 on testing, only for him to come back worse than before.
Oh, and as a side note- my dutch, Panini, got flea treatment as well, just as a precaution. She’s in good health and she and Avi are very closely bonded.