Outer ear infection

Question
Hi there. I've got a 7-week old male lop-ear bunny who we have had for just 5 days. When we got him he had an ear which had a couple of bite wounds filled with pus. I took him to the vets straight away and he has been on oral antibiotics since. The vet also discovered he was extremely underweight. In the past 5 days he's eaten non-stop and has started exploring the house with the occasional leap and jump. My concern is that his ear is not healing and is still standing upright. Every morning and night I clean out all the pus and it just keeps filling up again. I don't have 100% faith in our local vets (due to a negative experience with one of our cats) so don't want to take him back until I find out if there is something I can do myself at home.
Hope you can help.
Thanks, Julie

Answer
UPDATE:

Hi Julie,

make sure that with any antibiotic, you give your guy some good bacteria to offset the antibiotic killing off his good gut bacteria as well as the bad.  You can get banana-flavored, chewable acidophilus tablets from pet supply stores or your regular health store.  You can also get papaya tablets that will help his stomach too.  A papaya tablet a day, along with 1/2 to 1 acidophilus tablet a day (while on antibiotics) will help to make sure his gut keeps working well.

Lee

END UPDATE

Hi Julie,

glad to hear he is putting on weight and is happy (those little hops show he is happy).  Even rabbits when ill - they know you are taking care of them and they can be the happiest little guys.

The vet may need to put him on stronger antibiotics.  They are either not working at all, or are not very effective for this particular bacteria.  Ask the vet if he can do a culture and sensitivity test (C&S) to determine what antibiotics work best against it.  I would also ask if he can prescribe a topical antibiotic ointment you can put on the bite wounds.  You amy still have to clean out pus, but if you can cover the bite wounds with ointment, some will get in there to catch the infection from the outside.  Chloramphenicol seemed to do well with one of our guys that had a harder infection, but a C&S test will identify the best antibiotics for your rabbit's bacteria.  Usually several antibiotics are effective, and then the vet can pick the safest one for your rabbit.  

Just do not let the vet give him any 'cillins' like amoxycillin or ampicillin.  these are not good/not well tolerated for rabbits.  The exception is Penicillin-G.

Lee