Poopy Butts

[BunnyMunchkin]

My babies are 4 weeks old and while inspecting them today I noticed that some of them have poop that is stuck to the fur on their underside. Its not directly around their opening but more like caked on poo towards their belly. They are all acting completely normal and it is dried and not sticky, smelly or wet. They are all living in an xpen with their mom with fleece bedding and there has been absolutely no change in their poop. They are longer haired rabbits though like their mamma who carries anything and everything out with her on her fur. They are eating hay and pellets like crazy still. I am feeding them unlimited oxbow young bunny pellets and hay. I did attempt to use a warm wet cloth to remove the caked poo but it has hardened and is not budging. Should I reduce the amount of pellets or make any changes? 

They are all strictly indoor rabbits. 

[MeketatenBun]

Pellets should be reduced to a 1/4 cup a day, but keep unlimited hay! Sometimes pellets can be just too rich for bunnies and cause poopy butt. If when you limit their pellets for a few days and things aren’t improving, you may need to fiddle around with different types of hay (are you feeding alfalfa since they’re babies? This can also be rich and maybe Timothy would help. Timothy upset Meki’s tummy and Oxbow’s orchard grass hay is working better for her).

Although, what my vet and I have discovered, is that sometimes you have a weird rabbit with weird habits. Meki has chronic poopy butt, but her poo is always normal. We’ve narrowed it down to she sits in excess cecals in the morning until they harden. The orchard grass has diminished her excess cecals a bit, though and the problem isn’t as horrible as it used to be

[Azerane]

What are their poops currently like? It’s possible that they ate too many pellets when they started to and it disagreed with their systems. If their poops are well formed and firm they may have adjusted by now and the poop is no longer an issue (especially if it’s dried and hard and no longer wet or sticky) it may be from a past problem. It could also be that their cecal poops are the problem, they may be overproducing due to the amount of pellets, you could try limiting it. You will need to clean them up though.

[BunnyMunchkin]

Posted By Azerane on 4/16/2017 6:14 AM
What are their poops currently like? It’s possible that they ate too many pellets when they started to and it disagreed with their systems. If their poops are well formed and firm they may have adjusted by now and the poop is no longer an issue (especially if it’s dried and hard and no longer wet or sticky) it may be from a past problem. It could also be that their cecal poops are the problem, they may be overproducing due to the amount of pellets, you could try limiting it. You will need to clean them up though.

Their poops are completely normal. Exactly like their moms but tiny versions. I had read that I was supposed to give them unlimited pellets so that’s what I had been doing that . I choose not to feed alfalfa hay since the pellets I feed also contain alfalfa so they are currently eating Timothy hay and they are very good at eating a lot of that as well. Their mom does produce a lot of cecals though probably do to the increase in food (but I was told to offer her unlimited pellets and hay as well while she was nursing and on the skinny side since we had no idea she was pregnant when we rescued her) so it’s possible that they may have gotten into some of her leftover cecals that she sometimes leaves in the litter box.

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