my baby bunny

Question
I am deeply concerned as a new rabbit owner. We had 10 rabbits from ages 1 month to 8 months approxiamately. Our newest besides the new litter was a pair of hotots'. Our female Hotot is approximately healthy but our male about a week ago became very lethargic and had labored breathing and passed away in less than 12 hours. Then today when I went down to do the daily rounds and pet each one, one of the babies..she is about 6 weeks old was just laying in her cage I was able to easily pick her up with no wriggling at all so I began to look at her and noticed her eyes were crusted shut and she had very shallow light breathing. I brought her to the house and used a warm washcloth and cleaned her eyes and held her rubbing her back and belly and keeping her warm for the approximately 2 hours it took for her to pass away. I was devastated. Right before she passed away she started to act a little more perky and move some and then I laid on the couch with her and she started to bend her head back and gasp for air and was gone. With this info do you have any idea what I may be dealing with and if there is anything i can do to try and prevent it from happening to the rest of my very loved bunnies.
Thank you

Answer
Dear Taryn,

I am very sorry about the terrible loss of your bunnies.  It is often difficult to tell if a bunny is ill, since they instinctively hide signs of illness until they are quite sick.  You can learn to better predict when there's a problem here:

www.bio.miami.edu/hare/sickbun.html

Without a necropsy including histopathology of major organs, it's not possible to know why the male died.  It could have been any number of things.  But from your description, it sounds as if the baby died from a respiratory infection.  This is not uncommon in very young bunnies, especially if they are weaned before the age of 8 weeks and are not getting the immune system protection provided by their mother's milk that they need for that long.

If you see any subtle sign of trouble, it's better to be safe than sorry.  You can find a good rabbit vet here:

www.rabbit.org/vets

who can help you with diagnosis and treatment of these problems.  If you are worried about your other bunnies, it might not be a bad idea to take them all in for a general wellness check and listen to their lungs and insides to be sure there are no scary things lurking.

I hope they will all be fine, and I am very sorry about your losses.

Take care,

Dana