What’s Killing My Rabbits? What a dreadful week we experienced last month while raising rabbits for meat.
With a total rabbit population of 4 adult rabbits and 16 rabbits at 7 weeks old, something killed 6 of the younger rabbits and all of the adult rabbits over a 10 day period.
What’s killing my rabbits? With the first death occurring after a 3-day storm the first thought was that it was the weather that caused the first young rabbit to die.
Two days after the first death 2 more young rabbits showed the same symptoms and died the next day followed by 2 more deaths the next day – all the young rabbits were housed in the same long tractor.
So what’s killing my rabbits? The symptoms are that the rabbit becomes very lethargic and stops eating or drinking and within 12 – 48 hours it dies.
So what’s killing the rabbits I hear you say well initially I thought it was the stress of the storm but after the first 5 baby rabbit deaths we had our first adult rabbit come down with the symptoms.
I placed the nesting box in her rabbit hutch on day 29 and she actually gave birth that day to 6 baby bunnies, the next day she showed the symptoms and died later that day after feeding her baby bunnies.
I think she knew that she was ill before I noticed any of the symptoms and gave birth to the kitts as soon as she could.
So what’s killing my rabbits? So now I’m thinking this is serious and started doing more research on the internet.
That same day we had our first symptoms showing in the other rabbit long tractor containing the non-inter- bred rabbits and it was the first time I saw signs of stress.
When I opened the rabbit tractor one baby rabbit started to scream, it stopped after a few seconds as I replenished the food and water for the rabbits but I decided to watch the rabbits for a while.
After 20 min the young rabbit started to scream again and all the other rabbits rushed over to it – I removed the youngster straight away and it died the next day.
Apart from the one screaming rabbit the only other symptom that one other rabbit showed was with the very first rabbit death that we had, this rabbit had a fever before death occurred, none of the other rabbits that died had a fever.
The next day one of our bucks showed the symptoms and died within 12 hours followed by the other buck the next day.
So what’s killing my rabbits? The last buck was housed some 25 – 30 meters away from any of the other rabbits!
I am positive I now know what’s killing my rabbits it’s known as Rabbit hemorrhagic disease (RHD), also known as viral hemorrhagic disease (VHD), it’s a highly infectious and lethal form of viral hepatitis that affects European rabbits. Some viral strains also affect hares and cottontail rabbits. Mortality rates generally range from 70 to 100 percent.
How did this infectious rabbit disease enter my rabbit colony killing half my rabbits? I think that it was probably brought into our garden by a carnivore eating infected wild rabbits and then defecating in our garden.
After the 2 bucks died the last adult female passed away the following day.
We were now down to the 10 young rabbits now at 8 weeks old – all looked healthy and had good appetites but so did the rabbits that died before symptoms showed.
I decided to start providing a good multi-mineral and vitamin supplement including vitamin C to the feed of the remaining rabbits with a view of making them stronger.
Those 10 young rabbits are now 13 weeks old and all are doing well – we have had no new deaths and we seem to be over our dreadful week.
I gave the rabbits the Vitamin supplement just for 2 weeks and then stopped.
For a link to the vitamin supplement I used which is the Beaphar multivitamins for guinea pigs which includes Vitamin C :
Amazon.com :
Amazon.co.uk :
Amazon.fr :
I hope now that all my existing rabbits are immune and will pass that immunity on to their offspring.
I hope you found this video entitled ” What’s Killing My Rabbits ( What a Dreadful Week ) Raising Rabbits for Meat ” informative and helpful.
If you did enjoy this video on what’s killing my rabbits please leave a like, share, and subscribe if you’re new to our channel.
Thanks for watching and I hope that no one else that keeps rabbits goes through the same dreadful week we experienced.
#whatskillingmyrabbits#whatadreadfulweek#raisingrabbitsformeat#rabbitdeaths#rabbitsdying#rabbitillnesses#rabbitdiseases#Infectiousdiseasesinrabbits#Viralhemorrhagicdisease
