Urgent care for rabbit family

Pregnant rabbit Dotty already had nine baby rabbits with her when she was brought to Blue Cross in desperate need of help.

Due to give birth any day, the exhausted mum was struggling with back-to-back pregnancies because of her unsuitable living conditions.

Just nine days after arriving at our Blue Cross Southampton rehoming centre, Dotty gave birth to five new bunnies - Cabbage, Sprout, Pea, Swede and Pepper.

Blue Cross needed to act fast to make sure all of the rabbits could receive the care they needed.

As well as her newborns, Dotty had arrived with a group of three week old baby rabbits born a few days before Christmas, along with several eight week olds.

Ellie Stansfield, Assistant Manager for On-Site Services at Blue Cross Southampton, explains: “The rabbits were in desperate need of our help.
“Dotty had obviously given birth and then became pregnant again almost immediately afterwards.

“Some of them also needed extensive vet treatment for eye infections.”

An older youngster named Mushroom – who was almost completely blind – had been mistaken for a female in his previous home.

Multiple pregnancies

This meant overwhelmed mum Dotty hardly had a moment between pregnancies.

Mushroom needed immediate vet treatment for persistent conjunctivitis in his eyes, while he and one of the babies, named Radish, were diagnosed with a painful genetic condition called entropion - or inverted eyelids.

“It’s been a massive group effort,” acknowledges Ellie. “When we first took them on, we weren’t intending to have them all but they had all these complications so we kept them all here at first.”

The care involved with looking after such a large group of rabbits is huge – from daily cleaning of their living environment to make sure they didn’t get any illnesses, to grooming and enrichment to keep them happy and positive.

“From the word go, we were socialising the babies and spending lots of time with them,” adds Ellie.

“We were also checking their eyes every day because we know the family had a history of entropion, affecting their eyes.”

“Because they’ve got angora in them, they need that daily grooming. The cleaning is a huge thing because even with just two rabbits it takes a lot of time to fulfil their needs and keep on top of thorough cleaning to help prevent them getting any illnesses.

“It was also important for us to give them enrichment – we like to give them things from outside like apple branches and dandelions and change their environment so they don’t get bored.”

Vet care

All of the rabbits needed vet care including worming every day for 28 days, as well as vaccinations to protect them against deadly diseases including myxomatosis and viral haemorrhagic disease (VHD), which attacks the internal organs.

Regular checks made sure they could be neutered when they were old enough, to prevent any more pregnancies.

Meanwhile, Mushroom and Radish needed more intense clinical treatment for their eyes.

Poor Radish had a very bad case of entropion in his right eye with long eyelashes growing into his cornea, while Mushroom was suffering a similar painful problem in his left eye.

Both bunnies had surgery to fix the excruciating condition and, after 10 days of recovery time, had a new lease of life.

With so many rabbits to care for, our team at Blue Cross Southampton knew that joining forces with other rehoming centres across the country would give the bunnies the best start in life.

Because the rabbits are cross breeds with angora and lionhead breeding, their coats need extra care with daily grooming to keep them healthy and avoid the risk of life-threatening flystrike, when flies lay their eggs on another animal.  

Volunteer drivers teamed up to transport some of the rabbits to our Devon rehoming, advice and behaviour unit, while some of the little bunnies went to be cared for at Blue Cross Burford, in Oxfordshire.

After more than three months of intense care at Blue Cross, many of the rabbits have already found loving new homes, while the rest are just waiting to hop into a caring spot to enjoy the attention they deserve.

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