I have an 18 motnh old cashmere...

Question
I have an 18 motnh old cashmere lopp. She had  a servere case of GI Statis in Jun04 where she stopped eating and all bowel movement ceased for 3 days but responded brillantly to  subcutaneous fluid , prepulsid(?) and a gut motility drug my vet gave her. The unfortunate thing is there are No knowledgable rabbit vets in my state ( due to the fact that keeping pet rabbits is illegal!)
My rabbit again seems to be suffering mild Statis she has a healthy appetite and the only obvious sign eating wise that something is different is she is not eating any pellets or drinking water at all. but is eating an abundance of fresh green succulent vegetables  , hay and grass. She is urinating normally and in large amounts. However her bowels are producing strings of 'pearly poops' where the stool is the size of a cooked grain of  rice on a string. this has been the case now for close on 2 weeks. The first day I noticed the change in bowel movement I took here to the vet, he has been injecting her with 100 mls of subcutaneous fluid every second day, again also a gut motility drug as well at B12 injections. We did this for 4 treatments but not change in bowel movement yet still she is overly alert and playful eating up a storm just no pellets. 5 days after the onset she started to eat pellets again for one day along with her adundant amount of fresh greens and hay  . The bowels immediately returned to normal pellet poohs but only for a day then she stopped eating pellets and the poohs are back to long rice grain bead rope poohs. Her appetite is still good she is active and playful. My vet is at a loss on how to treat her. I have noticed that when I get my lick baths from her she often then stops and gives a sneeze! She's never sneezed licking us before, yet she has no running nose her eyes are clear and her temp if normal . Her  breathing is also clear the vet says.
She is producing NO cecal poohs at all(normally she produces an abundance of them and never seems to eat them at all), yet much to my daughters disgust the other morning she ate one of her rock hard strings of pearly poohs sitting there crunching away trying to chew it!Any suggestion as to what my vet should be looking for or a drug regime that might get her  gut working correctly again would be great. My vet rules out that there is any type of blockage in her gut.

Answer
Dear Philippa,

Are you in Australia?  That's the only place I know where companion rabbits are illegal, which makes it a challenge to find a good vet.  I'm glad you have one!

Has your vet checked the bunny's molars?  Besides a diet too rich in starch and too low in crude fiber, dental (especially molar) problems are the most common cause of chronic GI stasis/ileus in rabbits.  The pain of molar spurs can cause stress that slows the gut, and this will result in the type of symptoms you are seeing now.

Please read the following articles:

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

and

www.bio.miami.edu/hare/ileus.pdf

for additional information.  But I think your bunny needs a very thorough, deep oral exam to see if there are molar spurs that need to be filed.  These are very common, and once they're filed and being properly maintained, I'm betting the chronic ileus problem will abate.

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

Dana