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Poop Stuck to Rabbit Butt

22 10:57:13

Question
Hi! Over the past year or so, I've noticed our rabbit has had poop clumps stuck to her rear off and on. We'll pull most of it off, but it just never seems to stop. Since she's seven years old, we figured she might be too old to reach back and keep herself clean, but we're not sure this is completely the problem. Today, we rinsed her butt under warm water to try and clean off any extra poop we hadn't snipped off with siccors. We also found today, that there were some raw cuts around her anal area as well as pus. What's going on with our rabbit? She eats normal and her stool looks regular, but why is it still clumping around her butt?

Answer
Dear Sara,

The problem you describe is not uncommon, especially in older rabbits.  What you are probably seeing is poorly formed cecotropes sticking to her bum either because she has cecal dysbiosis:

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

or because she is a little stiffer in her old age, and unable to reach down and ingest her cecotropes as they emerge, and she instead sits on them and squashes them onto her bum.  Caked poops can irritate skin and cause infections, so she must be kept clean.  The following method should help:

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

But the real need is to get to the bottom (ha) of the problem.  The most common cause of "poopy butt" is incorrect diet:

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

followed in a close second by the pain/stress of dental problems such as molar spurs:

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

Please read those articles to familiarize yourself with what could be going on to stimulate the problem.  Next, find a good rabbit vet here:

www.rabbit.org/vets

who can do a full wellness check, including a deep look into the mouth at the molars, to see if this could be the problem.  If the problem is arthritis, obesity, or other reason she can't reach around properly, those, too, have treatments such as pain medication, and diet, respectively.

I hope this helps.

Dana