rabbit hardly moving

Question
From being the naughtiest of my pair of rabbits, dotty the female,has almost stopped moving.4/5 days now. From living upstairs in her hutch, she will not go up the ramp, she sits down stairs, she has stopped cleaning herself, i have cleaned big lumps of poo from her backend. she is eating a little but has stopped drinking. i took her to the vets 2 days ago, they said she may have hert her back, gave her an injection and gave me METACAM to give her once a day, i know ive only given her 1 dose last night, but my gut feeling is it is not this, do you think they are right? any ideas, her mate jo jo is very well and happy, he sits upstairs as usual and leaves her on her own.  men eh...

Answer
Dear Linda,

Dotty is ill, and I'm not sure why the vets you saw dismissed her condition so cavalierly!  Please read this:

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

and take appropriate action to make sure her body temperature is normal.  That is the most important thing.  But she obviously is suffering from cecal dysbiosis, which causes the mushy poop, and you can read about this here:

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

Cecal dysbiosis is a *symptom*, not a disease, and it usually means the rabbit is ill or on pain.  Please get her to a rabbit vet who will be more familiar with these signs and take her more seriously as a patient:

www.rabbit.org/vets

Common causes of cecal dysbiosis in rabbits include incorrect diet:

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

and pain from dental problems:

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

but it could be anything from an infection to a urinary tract problem, and it needs the detective work of a good vet who can do bloodwork and a deep dental exam and other tests to find out what's going on.

Hope this helps.

Dana