whats wrong with my rabbit?

Question
My rabbit, Pepe, has a habit of producing a few, quite mushy droppings around midday or in the afternoon. They only seem to occur when he's been really heavily asleep, I wondered if there is a connection or is it just a sign of illness? Other than this he appears to be a healthy rabbit.

Answer
Hi Rach,

rabbits produce two kinds of pellets.  Fecal pellets are round balls that are basically the indigestible hay fiber (95%) and ingested hair (why they need hay!).  They also produce cecal pellets, which are smaller, in little clusters, that they will eat and re-process again because they are rich in vitamins they need.  Just as cows reprocess what they eat (chewing the cud), rabbits do so as well by re-ingesting their cecal pellets.

Normally cecal pellets are produced 3-5 hours after eating.  If they eat a lot of hay and/or are pretty consistent grazers, they will produce them more often.

Now if he is producing cecal pellets and not eating them, he may be overweight, or have a mouth problem.  Overweight rabbits do not have a nice taper towards their shoulders, they are as wide at the shoulders as they are in the hips.  They also can sometimes have a hard time bending down to eat the cecal pellets.  If he is not eating normally, or you find he has a wet chin and mouth area frequently, he could have a mouth problem.  In these cases I'd take him to your good regular rabbit vet.

Lee