Found Dried Blood in Bottom Litter Tray

Question
Dana,
Today March 16 Noticed for 1st time litter clumped tog. color red & sticky.  After examination I believe it is blood.  I have a 6 1/2 yr old choc. Mini Rex female. I examined her bottom & pressed a kleenix against it & came
up with no blood. Where she urinates looked fine. Her 2 front pads of feet did look pink where it was bare of some hair.
  However, upon cleaning her small litter tray I found pink residue.  When she made a BM after I cleaned the tray
it looked like there was a small droplet of wet reddish liquid.
   Question:  What could cause this?  Could it be due to
her age?   How long do mini rexs usually live? I am very
upset.
    Yrs. ago I had a different issue and was recommended to take her to Veterinary Assoc of East Haven and did. Unfortunately the vet that was on duty admitted she didn't
have expertise in rabbits.  So I paid $90.00 for no information on that issue.
Please answer as soon as you can.
Linda Pasquariello
Thank-you    She did eat her serving of Blue Seal 16 rabbit pellets this morning since 8am. I feed her that
3 dys a wk. Mon,Wed,Thurs,& Sat I feed her hay w/timothy in it. Doesn't look like she has urinated much since 10:40am till now 12:05pm noon. Just looked in tray & saw
a little more blood wetness in her litter.

Answer
Dear Linda,

If your bunny is not spayed, then I would be concerned that she has uterine cancer or hyperplasia (pre-cancer) that is hemorrhaging sporadically, and so is not always evident.  Uterine cancer is a *very* high risk in unspayed, unbred female rabbits, and at her age, this is the first thing I'd suspect if she is not spayed.

It is also possible that she is urinating orange or red urine, which can be caused by several different things:

http://www.rabbit.org/journal/3-1/red-urine.html

...but I'd certainly want to rule out the possibility of cancer before I breathed a sigh of relief on that front.

I don't know where "East Haven" is (Connecticut?), but you can find a vet who does have expertise with rabbits here:

www.rabbit.org/vets/vets.html

If you are in northern CT, then there are *many* excellent rabbit vets within driving distance in New York, and they are well worth the trip.

I would get her to a good vet ASAP for evaluation.  The good news is that uterine cancer will often resolve completely with a spay operation.  You can read more about that here:

http://www.rabbit.org/faq/sections/spay-neuter.html

It's not a death sentence if you have it removed promptly.  But if she's 6.5 years old, I would ask the vet about having chest radiographs done (if this turns out to be uterine cancer) to be sure there are no metastases.

I hope this helps.  Please write back if you have any other questions.

Dana