03-10-2005, 01:16 AM
I had an 11 month old Japanese Harlequin rabbit die yesterday evening around 8:30 pm. She lived inside for most of her life. But last week before Houston Livestock Show, I had to put her outside in a normal cage because no one would be at home and it would make it easier for my neighbor to come feed the animals that I did not take to show. When she was inside, she ate about 2 and a half cups of pellet feed everyday with a hand full of hay, along with a full 32 oz water bottle, a piece of lettuce and 2 carrots. Since she was spoiled rotten, when my neighbor noticed that she hadn\'t touched her feed at all, but ate a little hay and lettuce everyday and only about half of her water bottle, I thought it was just my rabbit\'s way of telling everyone that she was mad at us for putting her outside. When I got home from HLSR, I brought her inside but my dad said that I could only keep her inside in the daytime but she must go out at night. On Saturday when I put her outside for the evening, I fed her and watered her like normal. Sunday morning, I noticed that she hadn\'t touched anything. The food was still packed tightly in her feed bin and the water was at the same level in the bottle. I gave her some lettuce and she ate that but that was it. Yesterday, I came home from school and she was molting really bad. you could pull handfulls of fur out and it looked like a human with really bad dandruff. She also had runny eyes and everytime I\'d try to touch her she jerked like it was painful. it looked as if I could see every bone in her body sticking out. It looked horrible. I brought her inside and brushed her and called my friend who is in an animal nutrition/health class at Sam Houston State University. She told me my thoughts were correct about her being dehydrated and told me that I should crush half a vitamin C tablet up in a 3cc syringe with water and give it to her 3 times every 30 minutes. I did that about two times. This rabbit is normally a really active rabbit, always running around and doing little popcorn jumps, etc. Well, last night all she did was sit down in one spot for about 5 minutes and then move a few painful little jumps and then sit down again. Then about 10 minutes later, she started to run into things when she did move around, kind of like she was really dizzy. and shortly after that, she lost all control of her muscles and started spazzing out. She did her best to crawl over to the bed that she normally sleeps on and when she got there she layed down and died. Is it possible that this could be spread to my other rabbits? What about other species of animals? Has anyone else had similar problems? Any advice? Does anyone have any ideas on what could have caused this besides being rebellious and not wanting to stay outside? Please Help me. Thank you, Courtney Foote