Dead bunnies

Question
We just started raising rabbits for meat in the last six months.  After finally getting our New Zealand bred and she kindled with nine babies, we're slowly losing them.  The first one got out of the nest box, two more apparently were trampled in the first week or two.  Now they're six weeks old.  About 5 days ago, we noticed one was a little less spunky--it didn't move around as much as the others, and I had noticed when we were sexing them that it felt more bony.  I figured it had enteritis when we could wiggle it and hear water splashing in its belly.  We brought it in the house, put it in a box with hay, a couple pieces of carrot (to see if it was eating), and water (actually I made rehydration solution).  It ate the carrot, jumped out of the box several times, then had pudding-like poops on the floor.  During the night, it apparently had jumped out of the box again and was lying on the floor dead when we got up.
  The other five seemed healthy, but this morning my hubby found one of them dead in the cage.  It's nose was purplish but not bloody.  It's rear end and an area about 1 1/2" diameter around the rectum was wet with very watery blood (it was lightly pink) and it looked like several small clumps of fur were ?chewed? off and lying on the other fur.  I don't know if she chewed her skin or if she had watery bloody diarrhea or what.  There was no stool or pellets in the area of her belly/bottom that was wet, but there was some ?maybe? bloody diarrhea on some grass & hay in the pen.    

Is there anything to do to prevent the others from succumbing to the same thing?  And is this enteritis too?  This one was fine late at night and was dead before 8:00 a.m.

Thanks for any help you give.  We've tried to educate ourselves about rabbits and yet it seems we're doing very poorly right now.

Answer
Hi Sheri,

Don't be disheartened.  Rabbits are a very touch and go species.  No other domesticated farm animal is as touchy as a rabbit!  While you're learning you have to expect high mortality rates.  Rabbit raising is very much a trial and error process because everyone's situation is different.  You just need to find a system that works for yours.

It sounds like enteritis to me.  It's quite common for it to spread through your entire rabbitry.  Unfortunately, once a rabbit has it, there's not much you can do.  The kindest thing is to euthanaise it as it is an EXTREMELY painful condition.

Nutrition and hygiene are the big factors.  Make sure you have plenty of fibre in your diets.  Hay, lots and lots of hay will solve 95% of your enteritis problems.

Make sure cages, feeders, waterers etc are all clean.  Scrub with a good animal disinfectant at least weekly to control bacteria populations.

Despite your best efforts, you will still get cases of enteritis.  My first ever case of enteritis occured in a perfectly healthy doe who had problems with kindling - prolonged birth, dead kits, no maternal instinct to nest etc. Two days after she finished she developed enteritis.  I put her down and did a necropsy and found an infected mass in her uterus.  Short story is that there are MANY causes of enteritis and you'll get individuals who will contract it for no apparent reason.  But if you keep your premises clean and feed a balanced feed that is high in LONG STEM (ie hay) fibre then you're a long way towards avoiding any widespread problems.

Good luck!