Epizootic Rabbit Enteropathy

At particular risk seem to be growing fryers or overweight rabbits.

What does epizootic rabbit enteropathy
look like?

• Cecal impaction
• Watery Diarrhea
• Distended abdomen
• Mucus excretion (after 4th day)
• No fever

The illness peaks in 4-6 days, and can last 2 weeks or more. If the rabbit is going to die, it will likely die between day 3 and day 5. Typical losses are 20-50% of the herd. Rabbits begin to recover by day 7, and recovery occurs slowly.

If you were to perform a necropsy of the dead rabbits, you might find an impaction 20-30% of the time. You’d find a tremendous lot of gas and liquid ballooning the stomach. You’d also find considerable distention of the small intestine with liquid and a bit of gas.

What you won’t find are any outward signs of inflammation or other lesions. There may be mild microscopic changes in the lining of the small intestine, but these are not evident to the naked eye.

In the studies performed, up to 40% of infected rabbits died, and 100% of study animals got sick. It didn’t seem to matter how much exposure a rabbit received, whether small or large. All rabbits exposed became equally sick and experienced the same mortality rates.

In all these years, scientists have yet to identify the causative agent. Nevertheless, scientists have identified rotavirus and Clostridium perfringens in all the ‘inocula’ taken from animals sick with ERE and used to infect the study rabbits. Researchers were unsure of the role these germs played in the development of epizootic rabbit enteropathy without further study.

Prevention and Treatment

• Always give hay to your rabbits! Especially to your young bunnies. If your herd or house bunny gets sick, hay or stemmy alfalfa doesn’t prevent or cure ERE, but it helps the infection work its way out of the body, helps prevent a fatal intestinal impaction, and may reduce fatalities.
  
  
• Don’t allow your adult rabbits to get fat. Limit their daily ration, letting their weight be the guide

What to do if your rabbits get ERE:

• Stop all pellets and switch the herd to hay ONLY, until the symptoms abate. This could take 2 weeks, possibly
  
  
• Get the help of a rabbit-savvy vet asap
  
  
• The ‘usual’ antibiotics may not work, but in some cases, rabbit breeders assert that the following drugs saved rabbit lives in their barns:
  • Neomycin Sulfate
  • Panacur
  • Metronidazole for secondary clostridium infection (requires a vet prescription)
  
  
  
• Disinfecting the barn with chlorhexadine at least once a week may help prevent the spread of the disease

Comments? Experiences? Questions?

We'd love to hear from you.

Perhaps your comments or experiences can help others who read them.

So, comment away, and if you have pictures, you can post up to four of them.

What Other Visitors Have Said

Click below to see contributions from other visitors to this page...

Go from Epizootic Rabbit Enteropathy to Rabbit Diseases
Go from Epizootic Rabbit Enteropathy to Raising-Rabbits Home Page

New! Comments