Tips on how to prevent diseases from affecting your herd
Preventing diseases and other complications.
Intestinal problems and diseases of the respiratory system are some of the major problems to a rabbit’s health. There are a whole lot of diseases and skin parasites that are bothersome but are never fatal and are easily cured.
Prevention is easier, cheaper, and it is the most logical thing to do to
save yourself cost and possibly stress.
Easy to do things to prevent diseases from affecting your rabbits:
- Try to avoid buying at the marketplace where many unknown germs come together. Try to buy from respected breeders, or farmers with clean housing and healthy looking animals. Inspect the animals anyway and after bringing them home keep them separated from your other animals (quarantine) for at least 2 weeks.
- Regularly check on the health of your animals on the following points:
- Check nose, eyelids, ear edges for mange (little crusts), inside the ear for ear mite.
- Check the manure. Is it dry or somewhat pasty; it should be dry and firm.
- Feel the stomach, to check that it is not spongy. It should feel smooth.
- Check nose and front legs, certain coughs produce a kind of snot which then makes the front legs (which are used as handkerchief) dirty.
- Check for smell in the hutch, diarrhea/enteritis often causes a dirty smell. When the doe is lactating she is under stress and more liable to suffer an attack from intestinal germs (always present) such as coccidiosis. Sometimes the nest box needs cleaning.
- Design and construct your hutches with materials that permit easy cleaning.
- Clean the hutches every day, keep them dry. Disinfect regularly. Certainly, you will have all kinds of local disinfectants like Lime solution, Izel, Dettol, Vinegar; you can also use kerosene if nothing else is available. When using a disinfectant having strong smell which hurts the respiratory tract of man and animal alike. Keep your rabbits away when doing so and do not put them in a cage that still smells.
- Keep the rabbits away from their manure; Self-cleaning (Mesh) floors and no (deep) litter system are to be preferred.
- Quarantine/separate rabbits you suspect are ill so they do not infect healthy animals.
- The circulation of clean fresh air in the rabbit’s hutches is essential, a strong manure smell is no good, even though there are large differences between individual noses; your own nose is your best measuring guide. If you cannot stand it, the rabbits probably cannot either.
- Feed the correct diet of 80% hay, with handfuls of fresh grass. It is sometimes necessary to reduce the amount of dry food and vegetables significantly to prevent over weight and keep the guts rolling in good condition.
- Keep dogs and cats away from feed, water and nest box materials. Eggs of tapeworm occur in droppings of dogs and cats.
- Protect animals from disturbing factors, predators, night prowlers and visitors or noises that startle animals, especially pregnant does.
