Written by Hope Barakat

*Disclaimer: The specific dosages are ones the author has used with success. Your results may vary. When in doubt, consult your veterinarian.

I see this question asked often online. What do you keep on hand for your rabbits’ medical needs? It’s a great question, because when there is an emergency, the last thing you want to do is run out to buy something! A little background on myself- I grew up in BC in a little cabin in the mountains with parents who were a little bit “hippie.” Raising rabbits for meat fit right into their lives, along with abundant gardens, and barefoot homeschooled children. What didn’t fit in was any kind of expensive veterinary bills for their little piece of self-sufficiency. Our dogs and cats were never altered or vaccinated. An animal that needed medical care was taken “into the woods.” Unfortunately, some animals were just left to their devices and died unnecessarily. But as I tell my children, when we know better, we do better!
It is my intention as an urban farmer, to never have my animals endure any kind of prolonged suffering. While I do raise my rabbits both for show and for meat, my suggestions here are valuable to pet owners as well. I would like to caution that I am not a veterinarian, and these suggestions are from my own personal experience and not to be taken over the advice of your veterinarian.
My own family bought our first rabbits during the long covid shut down. At the time I had six of my own children and two foster children. My decision to start raising meat rabbits served two purposes. My children were anxious seeing empty shelves in the store. Limitations to restrict hoarding were difficult to get around with a family of ten. I recall there was a limit of two bags of pasta per customer. It was frustrating because that was only enough for one meal at my house! As well, trying to entertain eight children when you couldn’t leave your property was a nightmare. Adding rabbits kept them entertained for weeks and relieved some anxiety about food scarcities. Building the hutches and planning for the new addition kept them all happily occupied, and I was happy to have something to do that wasn’t a “screen.”
We added several different rabbits the first few months, from multiple different home breeders. We had mixes and purebreds, Rex, New Zealand, Giant Flemish, Californian, even some Lop mixes. And we brought them all home and put them in a great big colony style pen.
Boy was that a mistake.
We had rabbit fights. Cuts and bitten ears. Then bloated bellies, which turned out to be Coccidia. Babies in their nests would have their eyes sealed shut and go blind. Then one day our puppy woke up paralyzed in her hind legs. Off to the vet we went where many tests were run with no definitive answer. We were sent home with an antibiotic. Three days later, one of our rabbits also had paralyzed back legs. Some internet searching later, we went back to the vet with a culled rabbit, and an idea about E. Cuniculi. The rabbit was kept for testing and the vet was pleasantly surprised to discover that whatever antibiotic he had prescribed for our puppy was also the right treatment for E. Cuniculi. Our puppy went on to make a full recovery, and our rabbits were moved off the ground into individual wire cages. Many lessons were learned. Now I have a fully stocked medical kit that I keep on hand for easy fixes to all these problems.

1. Antibiotic Eye Drops

This is probably the one I pull out the most often. Kits love to get crusty eyes in the nest box, and sometimes older rabbits will get weepy eyes from dust or hay particles. A few days of treatment will clear them right up. Make sure you clean the crustys out first with a warm wet cloth, so the drops can get right into their eyes.

2. Milk Replacement Powder

Abandoned babies? Runt of the litter? The best option is always to foster to another rabbit, but this will do in a pinch. I mix it with half the amount of water that it calls for and add a bit of cream or egg yolk if I have it on hand. This helps boost the calories. Feed it with the tiniest syringe you can find and feed very slowly to avoid aspiration.

3. Wound-Kote AKA the Blue Spray

Whoops, we left those grow-outs together a tad long! Sometimes life happens and rabbits left together will fight. Bites and scratches can be common. I had a rabbit last month that somehow snagged her toenail on the wire of her cage. A case of sore hocks perhaps? Antiseptic spray wound dressing eases my worries about infection. Just a quick spray once a day, but be careful not to spray it close to anything you wouldn’t want permanently dyed a deep blue!

4. Corid (amprolium)

I did have to pick this up when I went to the states. I have heard that it can be found in Canada under a different name, but if you’re lucky enough to know someone heading over the border, ask them to pick you up a small jar of it. It lasts a long time! The most common symptom in my rabbitry for Coccidia was bloat, followed quickly by death. Usually, the whole litter would be affected, or in the case of my colony, the whole colony. I have found this to be an effective treatment: 1 tsp of Corid diluted in 4 litres of water. Treat for five days, then give untreated water for five days, then treat for five more days.

5. Oval Baby Gas Drops

Rabbits love to bloat! A very small change in their diet can cause them some very uncomfortable GI distress. Before assuming you have an outbreak of Coccidia, try a little tummy soothing with baby gas drops. Feed a syringe full 2-3 times a day until you see their stomachs are smooth again.

6. Safe Guard (fenbendazole)

Sold in farm stores for equine dewormer. I have never noticed worms in my rabbits, but we did have mites that mysteriously appeared only in one litter that was in a wire cage close to the ground. We also, as I said above, had E. Cuniculi appear after adding rabbits without practicing proper quarantine procedures. Now my rabbits all get treated spring and fall, two treatments, ten days apart. We had a new rabbit in quarantine recently who developed that signature wry tilted head, likely E. Cuniculi, and was successfully treated with Safe Guard as well, although it was a more intense treatment, daily for several days. You can find dosage information for your rabbit online for both preventative deworming and E. Cuniculi treatment.

7. Liquamycin (oxytetracycline injection)

Again, I was lucky to pick this up my last trip to the states. I use this very sparingly in my rabbitry for nasty infections, such as abscesses. It has saved me several times from having to cull a rabbit where I could not justify taking it to the vet. In our rabbitry, our animals are livestock, and we have to make hard decisions about terminal culling. For pet rabbit owners, it can be more common to go directly to a veterinarian.

8. Tums

Calcium supplements are often given to does right before they are expected to kindle. Mine love the taste of half of a tums and I like to think its similar to having an ice cream before going into labour, something that I know I would have loved!

9. Gravol

This one has only been used once here. I had a rabbit with a large abscess on her belly that I wanted to drain. Worrying that she would struggle during the procedure, I found dosing information online for cats and used it to calculate what amount to use. After waiting for the gravol to take affect, I wrapped her in a towel, performed a mini surgery on my kitchen counter, flushed it with saline water, and gave her an injection of antibiotics. She suffered no ill affects, healed perfectly, and went on to give me many litters of beautiful babies.

These treatments are mostly convenient and inexpensive to buy. However, as we all know, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! It is important to take measures to prevent issues before they occur. Especially with the latest scares of RHDV that we have had in Alberta, managing biosecurity is very important. Many rabbitries will not allow any visitors around their animals, choosing instead to meet at a nearby public space. Any new rabbits that join us spend 30 days in quarantine cages on the opposite end of our property. We have learned not to give our rabbits “treats.” Slowly changing pellet brands and slowly adding fresh greens in the summer is something even our youngest children will teach people who are new rabbit owners. And we have changed our wooden colony over to individual wire cages that can be cleaned often and well with strong disinfectant. All these changes have enabled us to have healthier, stronger rabbits and we use our Rabbit Medical Kit less and less. One of the lessons that I hope will stick with my children forever, is that these animals are in our care. We may have rabbits to nourish us or to be our companions, either way it is our most important job to make sure they have healthy happy lives and to provide them with the best care we can, in return for what they give us.