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No rabbit vets nearby! Please help! Bleeding eye

22 9:43:31

Question
My rabbit panicked and ran into the sides of her cage. Now there is blood around the outer occular edges. I have tried the pen light test and can't really tell. The eye is swollen and covered with dry blood that i am slowly wiping off with warm water. What can I do?

Answer
Dear Amy,

For now, continue to apply warm, moist compressed to the *closed* eye.  Rabbit pupils don't have a terribly strong response to light, even with the pen light test, so that might not tell you if there has been damage.  But a lack of pupillary response would be more likely if there were brain damage than mechanical damage to the eye, unless the mechanical damage were really bad.

Does the eye appear to be ruptured?  Can you tell if the blood is coming from the conjunctiva, or maybe even a wound near the eye itself, but in the fur?  Once the blood is cleaned off, you'll be better able to tell.

I know you say there's no rabbit vet nearby, but this really sounds like a trip to the vet is necessary.  Since an eye injury is not specific to rabbits (unless anesthesia or antibiotics are involved), any good vet should be able to examine the eye and tell you if there is an injury that needs to be seen by a veterinary ophthalmologist.

You can try to find a rabbit vet here:

http://www.rabbit.org/vets

I hope she will be fine soon.

Dana