Rabbit
Diseases: Major symptoms of the more common diseases affecting rabbits, such as snuffles
and enteritis.
Get to know some of the major symptoms of the major rabbit illnesses, and what you can do for these health challenges, including some effective home remedies.
Rabbit Health: Three rabbit husbandry practices that will help to optimize rabbit health and minimize the onset of disease.
To get to the true cause of your rabbit's illness, Always check with a vet right away.
Since we're not vets, see the disclaimers at the bottom of this page.
The Merck Veterinary Manual has a good amount of rabbit health care information.
How to Improve Health and Conquer Common Rabbit Diseases
Get More Info on Keeping Your Rabbits Healthy
As always, your purchase is 100% risk free. See our Double Value Guarantee below.
This page contains a fairly long list of nearly all the rabbit diseases that could possibly befall your rabbit or your rabbitry, plus links to pages of additional information about conditions impacting your rabbit's health.
You might not ever need to worry about the vast majority of these rabbit diseases, however pasteurellosis and some forms of diarrhea are fairly common banes amongst rabbits. I've listed them first.
PASTEURELLA MULTOCIDA (Snuffles)
With regrets, these two symptoms together tend to be diagnostic for Pasteurellosis, and occasionally for Bordetellosis (see below). Pasteurellosis is frequently incurable, and a very contagious respiratory disease. Snuffles is the common term, which describes the sounds made by rabbits that have mucus-filled nasal airways. The term Pasteurellosis is a reference to the causative bacteria: Pasteurella multocida.
Pasteurellosis can quickly degenerate into pneumonia and death. It is also the guilty agent in a variety of other serious infections in other parts of a rabbit's body other than its respiratory system.
Do not use a rabbit with Snuffles as a breeding animal.
Learn more about Snuffles here
There is a glimmer of hope for curing Pasteurellosis if...
Is your rabbit sneezing due to Pasteurella bacteria or other simpler causes? Click here.
If antibiotic treatment is to be successful, it should be instituted promptly upon development of symptoms. Unfortunately, many rabbits that come down with Pasteurellosis cannot shake the infection, despite treatment.
How rabbit breeders can gain control of pasteurellosis (snuffles) in their herds - Utilize this breeding and culling program which can eradicate the disease in your rabbitry within one to three years, and fix health into your rabbits' genetic code.
BunnyVac for Pet Rabbit Owners:
The BunnyVac is a Pasteurella multocida vaccine for rabbits in the USA. It is licensed by the USDA for use in healthy rabbits to prevent snuffles. But the off-label use in sick rabbits has been reported to reduce or eliminate symptoms of respiratory illness in some sick rabbits. It is not a panacea, however.
See Rabbit Vaccine Immunity for more on how the BunnyVac works.
Seven reasons why a show rabbit breeder should think twice about vaccinating against P. multocida
BORDETELLA
in Rabbits:
Bordetella bronchiseptica infections in
rabbits can look and act a bit like Snuffles, but how to tell the
difference? Learn to recognize the symptoms and how, or if, to treat.
RABBIT
DIARRHEA
These rabbit diseases can cause severe watery or mucoid
diarrhea of varying severity. Some can
be fatal within 12-48 hours:
BE PREPARED:
Dysbiosis - a disruption of the normal healthy bacteria in the rabbit gut - can occur suddenly and without apparent cause. The result could be a mild bunny diarrhea, a potentially fatal enterotoxemia, or something in between. Having a tube or two of Benebac on hand could save a bunny-life or even the life of a stricken adult rabbit. Benebac re-supplies healthy gut bacteria which helps to normalize the action of the intestines.
Add Benebac to your arsenal of remedies for rabbit diarrhea.
Benebac Plus Helps Prevent or Treat Bunny Diarrhea
Abscesses
Suspect an abscess if your rabbit has a soft round lump under the jaw line or nearly anywhere on the body. A pus-filled abscess is due most frequently to either
pasteurella or staphylococcus infections just under the skin. Click
here for info on abscess treatment in rabbits.
Rabbit
Hemorrhagic Disease
Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease (RHD) is a devastating viral disease that can wipe out your
entire herd in a matter of days. This is one rabbit disease every United States or Canadian rabbit
breeder should know about and protect against.
RVHD and RVHD2 are killing rabbits in the UK and Europe. Since these two strains of Rabbit Hemorrhagic Fever are endemic there, they handle outbreaks differently, and they have developed vaccines for both strains of viral rabbit diseases.
RVHD in BC: Info on the ongoing 2018 outbreak of RVHD2 in British Columbia.
Myxomatosis
This is a very nasty viral rabbit disease carried without symptoms
by wild rabbits. The disease is
transmitted by mosquitoes, and is fatal.
Myxomatosis is common in Europe. In the
United States it is present in California and Oregon.
Myxy comes in two forms. In the rapidly killing form, all you see is a dead rabbit. But here are some clues you might see if you're watching:
The next thing you know, the rabbit is dead.
There's a chronic form of myxy, where the face, lips and eyelids get huge lumpy swellings, and sometimes the ears as well. If, at the same time, the rabbit's vent (female) or scrotum (male) swells, you'll know it's myxomatosis.
See photos of stricken rabbits here, along with technical (veterinary) info on Myxy.
The worst time for the spread of myxomatosis is mosquito season - late summer and early autumn.
There is no cure for this disease and no vaccine in the United States. Europe has a vaccine. Consult your local rabbit clubs for vaccination schedules.
What to do (USA):
Immediately destroy sick rabbits, and burn
or bury their carcasses.
The recommendation of Drs. Lukefahr, Cheeke and Patton in Rabbit
Production is: Whenever a rabbit goes off its feed or appears
abnormal, and if the rectal temperature is elevated above
103.5 degrees F, kill the rabbit and bury the carcass. In their opinion, the disease is so deadly,
it is better to mistakenly kill a rabbit that is not infected with myxy,
than to let one live that does.
In areas where myxy is endemic, it is a good idea to control the
presence of flying insects in your rabbit barn. This is a nasty viral disease that ranks right up there with the worst rabbit
diseases.
Rabbit Production, 10th Edition
This Important Scientific Resource is Available in Paperback, Hardcover, and Kindle. Prior Editions are Equally Useful if Newer Editions are Scarce.
Rabbit
Syphilis
Rabbit syphilis is another name for 'vent disease.' This
highly infectious disease results in crusty, inflamed and tender sores around the
genitals. The sores can spread to the
face and nose with grooming and coprophagy.
An infected animal will resist breeding due to the discomfort. But since it is contagious, one infected animal that is infectious but not yet showing symptoms can spread the disease to many other animals.
Check your breeding animals frequently, and be very careful with studding your bucks. Some recommend dedicating a buck to stud service and not using that buck in your own herd.
Rabbit syphilis is easily cured with penicillin.
Get the whole scoop on Rabbit Syphilis here
The following serious infections can threaten or take the life of lactating does:
Mastitis:
Infection of one or
more mammary (milk) glands, also called 'caked udder.' If the nursing doe stops eating, check her
milk glands. Additionally, she will run
a fever of, say, 104 degrees F or more.
The doe needs immediate antibiotics to prevent a full-blown
abscess and hardening of the milk gland.
Young Doe Syndrome:
The doe
suddenly dies, 4-10 days after kindling a perfectly fine litter. The doe may go
off her feed. You might also notice a
touch of rabbit diarrhea. The cause of Young
Doe Syndrome is enterotoxemia,
but a staph infection of a milk gland can also cause sudden death in the
lactating doe.
Maintaining clean cages can help prevent mammary gland infection ("caked udder," "blue udder,") and giving hay on a daily basis can help prevent enterotoxemia.
Black Oil Sunflower Seeds - For Extra Nutritional Support
The Rabbit Illnesses page addresses these rabbit diseases or conditions resulting from various parasites:
Our Rabbit Health Care page gives tips and information on dealing with other non-infectious challenges to your rabbit's health:
Learn what you can do, if anything, about malocclusion, which is when the rabbit's teeth don't wear down correctly due to an incorrect alignment of the teeth, resulting in the teeth growing excessively long. Other terms for malocclusion are buck teeth and wolf teeth.
Pictured: All 6 of the rabbit's front teeth are perfectly aligned
All the above is a TON of information! It's all yours (and then some) in our health and diseases e-book: Keep Your Rabbits Healthy...
How to Improve Health and Conquer Common Rabbit Diseases
Get More Info on Keeping Your Rabbits Healthy
As always, your purchase is 100% risk free. See our Double Value Guarantee below.
While we have hands-on experience with the most common of rabbit diseases, Raising-Rabbits.com has no actual veterinary expertise. We do know that a normal temperature for a rabbit is 101 - 102 degrees Fahrenheit.
First Disclaimer:
Our desire is to communicate what we’ve learned through
hard-earned experience over the last 30 years.
Some of it will be very helpful to you. But if your rabbit is sick and
you’re looking for guidance, we can at best only show you the big picture of
what some rabbit diseases typically look like.
There’s not a chance we can help you make a definitive diagnosis. Always consult a professional veterinarian,
especially one that specializes in rabbits and small mammals.
About rabbit vets:
They’re not as easy to
find as you might think! So you’d be
well served to locate a vet experienced in rabbit diseases before you have any need of him. Because when you need one,
you may very well need him right away.
Second Disclaimer:
In the United States, a pet rabbit can cost as little as
$10, and as much as $30. The majority of
show-quality purebred rabbits will set you back at most up to $100. We think that for the price of a veterinary
visit (and toss in any drugs you might be advised to purchase), you can, and
maybe you should in some circumstances, simply replace your rabbit.
This is absolutely no consolation to the owner of a well-beloved pet bunny.
Begging your pardon, we know that in the case of a few, very
serious and contagious rabbit diseases, the sick rabbit should not be allowed
to live. For the rest, however, we
sincerely hope you will be able to work with your vet to find a way to make your
pet rabbit better.
Our policy is to always OVER-deliver
on value,
which is why your purchase is fully covered by our
Double-Value
Guarantee.
Go ahead - take any of our e-books for a test drive. Peruse our detailed informational and educational e-books. Examine our plans for building rabbit cages, runs, or metal or PVC hutch frames. Check out the Rabbit Husbandry info e-books.
If you aren't completely satisfied that your e-book purchase is worth at least double, triple or even quadruple the price you paid, just drop us a note within 45 days, and we'll refund you the entire cost. That's our Double-Value Guarantee.
Note: When you purchase your
e-books, they will be in PDF format, so you can download them to any device that
supports PDF format. We advise making a back-up copy to a drive or cloud
account. If the books are lost, you can also purchase another copy from Raising-Rabbits.
Your comments or experiences can help others who read them. So, comment away, and if you have pictures, you can post up to four of them. Pictures are always helpful.
(Have questions? Perhaps your question was already asked, and answered, below. If not, Karen has answered hundreds of your questions in her book: Rabbit Raising Problem Solver, covering every aspect of pet rabbit and livestock rabbit care as well as rabbit health and disease. We recommend it!)
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Our policy is to always OVER-deliver
on value,
which is why your purchase is fully covered by our
Double-Value
Guarantee.
Go ahead - take any of our e-books for a test drive. Peruse our detailed informational and educational e-books. Examine our plans for building rabbit cages, runs, or metal or PVC hutch frames. Check out the Rabbit Husbandry info e-books.
If you aren't completely satisfied that your e-book purchase is worth at least double, triple or even quadruple the price you paid, just drop us a note within 45 days, and we'll refund you the entire cost. That's our Double-Value Guarantee.
Note: When you purchase your
e-books, they will be in PDF format, so you can download them to any device that
supports PDF format. We advise making a back-up copy to a drive or cloud
account. If the books are lost, you can also purchase another copy from Raising-Rabbits.
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