Hi, and welcome to this module on the Normal rabbit and its needs. In this module, we're covering basically the wild rabbit and its biology, along with some anatomy and physiology, and we're gonna look at how these fit with the rabbits, pet rabbits, welfare needs and veterinary care. And the 5 pet welfare needs are a starting point, so these are behaviour, companionship, diet, environment, and health.
And we're gonna be looking at the basic biology to inform what the actual needs are for a pet rabbit, and therefore what we need to do to fulfil these. So a rabbit, basic, very basic biology, Eictolaticus caniculi, it's a lagomorph, it's originally from the Iberian Peninsula, which was named by the Phoenicians for, this particular species, which is very common there. In the UK it was introduced by the Romans and by the Normans, separately, whereas who kept them for food and fur.
They are only domesticated very recently compared to other pet species, so basically it's happened gradually over the Middle Ages, so really post the the Norman er introduction. And modern day pet keeping really is, is really quite recent, with a big explosion in keeping rabbits in the 1800s, and this also saw a big shift from keeping them for food and fur and development of different breeds and showing these different breeds. And from this came, if you like, typical companion animal pet keeping, type, husbandry.
Later we kept us as laboratory animals, and for us as veterinary surgeons, this is often a source of, of data on the species. We've gotta be a little bit careful here because we've gotta remember that laboratory rabbits are often from very specific genetic lines, bred for very specific purposes. They're usually young mature animals, and they are usually kept in very specific husbandry situations.
So although the data can be useful, it can also be misleading, on the grounds that the pet rabbit may not be entirely the same as these. So, we've gotta be a little bit careful and and just develop more information from the pet rabbit itself. Lifespan typically is about 10 to 12 years for an average sized rabbit, sometimes a bit longer.
For giant breed rabbits or dwarf breed rabbits, usually about 6 to 8 years, so much shorter. They are crepuscular, i.e.
They feed at dawn and dusk, and if you look at wild rabbits, typically when you see them, they will feed at other times, so during the day or sometimes even the night, riskier times for of the prey species, they'll do this if they're particularly hungry, so if there's a shortage of food or if they're breeding. They have a diurnal rhythm, which fits in with this crepuscular lifestyle, and this is important to us too because a lot of our clinical pathology, we take blood samples will reflect this diurnal rhythm, and a good example of this is in the haematology, where in the white cells in the morning, the heterophil to lymphocyte ratio is dominated by lymphocytes, and in the evening it's the heterophil that dominates that ratio. The evening hemogram very much resembles a stress hemogram, which may well reflect that lifestyle again.
In terms of reproduction, as mentioned, rabbits do breed, very rapidly, typical of prey species, they need to replenish their numbers as fast as possible, and their cycle is really designed to do this. So reach puberty at 3 to 4 months, slightly in females, slightly later in males, slightly later in large breeds. Gestation's about 32 days, and they produced, they produce a very helpless altricial young.
And kits are produced in in a shallow tunnel, not a typical, deep burrow. And left there. Litter size is around about 5 to 8, can be up to 12.
The dose cycle means that they are receptive for 14 out of 16 days, and they are induced ovulators. In other words, they are very, very ready to breed at most times and that rep that mating will will usually produce ovulation and will usually produce young. The dough, in addition, can reproduce days after giving birth, so there's a very rapid turnaround between litters.
They can amplify their numbers extremely quickly. In terms of rearing, they are pretty rotten mums, they only feed the young 1 to 2 times a day. They produce a very, very concentrated milk.
This enables the young to grow very quickly, they emerge at 1 to 2 weeks, and this is important, time to look at, because this is when they are exploring, this is when they're very receptive, this is when they are very much learning about what's around them. They also start taking solid food at this time. And they are then weaned at 4 to 6 weeks of age.
Rabbit milk, to reflect how infrequently they are fed by mm, . Is very high fat, very high protein, if you wanna use a replacer, here's a recipe I found a few years ago, which seems to work quite well, so one part evaporated milk, 1 part water, one part egg yolk, and 1 tablespoon of corn oil. More recently, I've added a little bit of probiotic to that as well, and hope to try and restock the gut too, which is one thing you don't get from from non mum feeding.
And essentially this answers a lot of questions we often get with people who do inadvertently or or novice breeders, that they get worried that mum has abandoned the young and often start to interfere early, . This can cause a lot of problems because if they do disturb the the nest too much, the mum will genuinely abandon them and hand rearing from a very early age is quite difficult. But basically, mum doesn't feed them or even visit them more than once or twice a day, so it's one thing to reassure the owner that this is not abandonment.
Otherwise, rabbits are very much social animals, and we live in groups of about 6 to 8, both males and females are very territorial, and they have linear hierarchies within their group. This hierarchy is established through mounting, chasing, grooming, chinning to spread scent there, and if that doesn't work through fighting. They can be quite aggressive.
If anybody's read Watership Down, then they will be aware of some very accurate behavioural analysis from Richard Adams. They will resource guard, so whether that be food source or a a suitable nest burrow, they, they will resource guard these, and this is also important for how those territories form, where they form, and what is important to them. So, those are food, water, and borough.
Within living quarters, the home burrows are not the same as the nesting burrows mentioned earlier, they're typically very extensive burrows in banks and hedges, and they have multiple entrances and exits. So if a predator enters through one, the rabbits can rapidly exit through another one. They feed in open areas close to burrow entrances.
They get, want to get back to home base as quickly as possible, they know how vulnerable they are when they're feeding, so we don't go a great distance. This also explains a lot about their. Exercise, we'll talk about respiratory system later, but they don't have a great respiratory reserve, that's because effectively they're either ambling about feeding, using very little oxygen in the muscles, or they're doing very rapid, short anaerobic exercise to get away from a predator.
So in other words, they don't have that big demand for oxygenating blood. So key points from this, rabbits are prey species, rabbits are social animals, and rabbits will defend key resources, and this is really vital to understand when keeping when keeping them in captivity. So, welfare needs.
We'll start with the first of the pet welfare needs, that's behaviour. So, how do prey species behave? Well, they have enhanced sensors for detecting predators.
If those are restricted, there's a problem. An example of this will be the eyes, which are on the side of the head, they don't have great binocular vision in front of them, they will have a blind spot beneath their chin because they don't have, you know, because of where the eyes situated, but it does give them great all-round vision for detecting movement, for detecting predators. They will stick together.
A lone rabbit is a very vulnerable rabbit, a lone rabbit is probably a dead rabbit. And they'll need to have an escape plan, back to his feeding, you know, they'll feed in the open, they wanna know where that burrow entrance is, they'll head straight to it if there's any problems. They can be aggressive, they have linear hierarchies, they resource guard.
These are important to them, and if they can't resolve those issues with visual or or smell signals, they will have to fight. They also have a tonic immobility response, this is where, when they're caught by a predator, they will feign death, everything slows down, and they will, Typically look good like they've died, predator releases grip slightly and the rabbit can quickly jump up and run away, that's the idea. This also is relevant to us because many times people are doing things to them, which they look calm, they're they're lying on their backs for a good example, and we interpret this as being a relaxed rabbit, actually it's rabbit and tonic immobility, this is a fear response and .
They're not as relaxed as they actually look. When they don't have their needs fulfilled, or in unfamiliar settings where they don't know where the escape route is, they do become very anxious. They become stressed, this causes problems, we know that.
They also breed lots. This can be a problem er for pet keeping. If we haven't got that, the, the rabbit sexed properly, and suddenly there can be an awful lot of rabbits.
And of course, being a prey species, they don't show pain or illness very easily. They mask the sciences as much as possible, and for veterinary surgeons, this is difficult, and for owners, this is difficult to say when the pet is ill and what and and how severely ill it may be. Now, has domestication changed anything?
Again, very recently domesticated, and the answer is basically no. Domestication does not override biology. Yep, there are a few genes that make them more likely to cope, to habituate, to socialise to people, but that does not override the biology, it doesn't override their needs, it does not make them any less fearful, other than in certain situations, if they've been socialised correctly.
As an example, when I was young, I used to hand rear young rabbits that my, my cat brought in. We had an escaped domestic rabbit nearby, so we often had half and half wild domesticated rabbits. Those tamed very quickly indeed.
The purely wild rabbit, virtue never tamed out. And seeing seva genetic influence there too, and although they're coming in about the same age, it's how likely we're to to respond to that. So, domestication does have some effect, but it does not get over all the other needs.
So in clinic, and what we're advising owners, we give behavioural advice based on the biology of a rabbit. Not what we may look at the ideal pet rabbit. Examples being They're crepuscular.
Particularly for the indoor rabbit, is we like to live in bright light, we're very visual creatures, so should we be dimming those lights? Should we be giving a rabbit somewhere to get out of bright light, because that's not what they're used to, we'll be getting sensory flooding from that. For tunnelling, we've gotta firstly watch digging, if we keep them outside, they are very good at digging, so a very basic thing to do is underwire those, those enclosures.
Or we need to provide shelter, so we need to find somewhere dark and confined, where they can get out of the way if they want to, so they're gonna feel safe. And there is a bit of a response where rabbits, if they can feel the side of a tunnelloma on their flanks, will feel more secure than if they've got an even a dark space that that's much larger, so that's helpful. And if they are in open spaces, how are they gonna get there and how are they gonna get out of them?
So we wanna feed them, we wanna see them, they've gotta have an escape route at any time, so they feel more secure and somewhere to hide, whatever happens, indoors, outdoors, somewhere to hide. We need to understand what their natural postures are, what they need to do, so, they are generally, if you like, on all 4 ft, but they will stand on their back legs and look around. So if they feel slightly threatened, they want to stand up and have a look around there, and enclosures and keeping needs to reflect that as well.
They need to exercise, they're not like dogs who who just run around, they have a certain needs when they do want to, but it's good for them to have space to exercise, maintain fitness, and we'll talk a bit about the skeleton later on as well, and of course we know when they're they're they're excited, they'll do a thing called binking where they do little hops and stuff, which is again, a way of expressing their their state at the time. If they can't, there are likely to be issues physiologically, again, we're talking about skeleton, there are also likely to be Consequences from lack of exercise, including obesity, which we'll talk about later as well. In addition, there are times when a lack of space can be a problem when they are frightened, and we do see impact injuries when rabbits run into a side of an enclosure where they've been scared, and simply isn't enough, isn't enough space to get out of the way, or they're not aware of where the shelter is, and therefore they're just running blindly to somewhere, and that will cause a problem too.
The next need is companionship, as I said, they live in small groups. They use these visual signals. And as well as standing upright and things, they'll also use facial expressions to denote various things, and we use that of course in the grimmer scales for pain or what have you.
And if all else fails, then of course physical aggression is where they end up with. Now, we tend to neuter because we don't want them breeding. 6 to 8 group is a is a set up for for for breeding, but how does neutering affect that?
Lin they have linear hierarchies between male and female. Obviously with neutering, we'll take away that that there's male and female differences to some extent, so we're still probably gonna end up with a linear hierarchy within a smaller group, but probably only one hierarchy rather than two living together. There's a difference too between rabbits who live together and rabbits who are bonded.
And within the group, we would expect to find in a natural situation, we would expect to find a bonded pair within that. However, that's not always the case, rabbits do have animals do choose what their, their, their companion is, just like people do, and the same goes for, for domestic rabbits. And here's a nice picture of two rabbits grooming each other, it's clearly a very bonded pair.
Not a great idea splitting these because that will cause obviously stress to both rabbits in the short term. That may affect being able to put them back together because the bond may break if if you're not careful, so then we go back smelling differently, that sort of thing, that may, may have profound effects too. And of course, how do we actually buy our rabbits?
I think every switching on now, you don't want to have a single rabbit, but you wanna have, have a pair at least, so we go and buy them, and what do we do, we choose two rabbits. They're not necessarily the pair who are together, and really the idea way of buying rabbit is, yes, we choose one rabbit, we choose rabbit we like the look of, we choose one rabbit we want, but the second choice should be the rabbit that spends most time with that one. So the breeder or the pet shop should be able to tell us, OK, fine, if you have that rabbit, then this is the rabbit that needs to go with them, not necessarily the one you would choose.
Having a socialisation, again, big problem, we all know about fearful rabbits being handled in the clinic, we know about fearful rabbits being handled at home, and we're also very aware that when we take x-rays of often older rabbits, we can see really quite severe spinal trauma, subluxation, things they've lived with for a long time, and if you talk to the owners, there's no history of trauma or anything. A lot of those originate from when they're very young and handled, when the bones are soft. Joints are not not properly formed, and they're they're they're they're, they're they're scared being handled.
And then we go back to this exploring phase of 1 to 2 weeks when they start emerging from a burrow, that's when they need to be socialised. That's when people need to start handling them, start doing things with them, so they're not scared. Within pet selling, they shouldn't be sold till they're much older than that, and if they're not being properly socialised long before that, then sometimes the first proper handling we're gonna get is when they're sold, probably 8 weeks, and that is way too late, the learning window has largely shut, the handling experience is going to be very stressful to them, they're gonna be frightened, and this is when those those spinal injuries occur.
Now, it may just be a, a, a very short, by the time it happens, it may not be particularly noticeable, it may be they may be a little bit lame, they may just be very quiet. How does a lame rabbit look? How does a rabbit back injury look?
They just freeze, they sit still, they don't do anything until everything's sort of healed. That doesn't often show as being an injury to an owner, so a lot of these problems happen then too. So how do we avoid a lot of these spinal injuries?
Basically by socialising rabbits from 1 to 2 weeks when they started exploring phase, by handling regularly from that period, and getting them used to it and adapted to people. So, diet, again, these are fibervores, so like guinea pigs, they eat predominantly fibre. Fibre exists in different forms, we have long chain long fibre, we have short fibre, and we have indigestible, against digestible fibre, and they're gonna need all of these different types of fibre to keep their gut moving properly.
We're gonna talk about hindgut later on in this talk, and also about cerotrophy later on as well, because they, they do re-ingest their faeces. It's a very inefficient digestive process, they have hindgut fermentation, they produce hard and soft faeces, the softer ones are reingested, and then that they the the nutrients absorbed in the small intestine. We keep a diet simple.
Grass and hay, that's 85 to 90% of their diet to what they were designed to do, and that's really what we should be doing within captivity. Bear in mind, we're talking about percentages, we're talking about calories, not volume, and that's really important. And here's a one of my favourite diagrams showing basically the makeup of what we should be feeding them based on the size of rabbit, and with that, can you actually overfeed the fibre, can you increase that fibre?
The answer is yes, you can. What happens if you feed more fibre, actually they do really well on that, so you can't really overfeed the fibre. You can overfeed the rest.
Another issue within this is quality of food, whether it be the fibre part or the non-fiber part, and poor quality means loss of nutrients, particularly through oxidation. It can also make the food unpleasant, so we get inappotent, and sometimes we can end up with irritation, so things like dust, er with . Breakdown of the, of, of the fibre particularly, and then we get irritation of respiratory membranes, eye membranes, that sort of thing.
And of course poor quality can lead to nutritional lack, foreign bodies, particularly with nose and stuff, respiratory disease from lung irritation. In terms of respiratory disease, we can see both upper and lower respiratory disease, and this is often combined with ventilation issues, now we've been talking about husbandry in just a moment, but very many rabbit hutches are not well ventilated, particularly inside, and of course you enclosed space with lots of dust in the air, not much ventilation, this is really a recipe for respiratory disease, damage to mucous membranes, invasion of bacteria, and problems. And so something like snaffles, which is basically just a name for upper respiratory disease, it's not always pastorella er pastorosis.
Pasorella, even if it isn't always involves the bacterium, even if it is, it's often been facilitated to enter and cause problems by husbandry problems, by even by poor quality diet to get there. If you have a rabbit who does have persistent problems with this, one way round it, or you've bought some hay and it's not as good quality as as you originally thought, and that does happen, then soaking it really helps get the dust out of the air, obviously you can't be bedding at that point, but in terms of feeding hay, you can soak it, you can, get the dust out of it that way. And this is the type of thing we'll be looking for is pneumonia, where we may see from irritation, it should always be part of an investigation of respiratory disease, is to look at husbandry.
So how do you assess hay quality? Well, there's a picture here of a summer's day, and basically, you should smell hay. It's .
First of all, it shouldn't be dust, you shouldn't be your head out of the bag sneezing, it shouldn't, it should look like hay, it should look nice and golden and, and, and even a bit green but really fresh looking, it shouldn't look brown and, mouldy and disgusting, and it should smell of summer days, it should smell lovely, and remind you and be very evocative of, of this type of countryside appearance. It should not smell unpleasant. How about grass, well, grass quality we can usually assess quite easily based on appearance, and we're kind of used to doing this, because we look around every day at the grass and decide how nice it is.
We can, grass typically has obviously very good fibre levels, it also has, silicates in it, which in terms of grinding and teeth mean it's particularly effective, and we can introduce grass from a very early age, even though you may hear rumours that, you can't, grass and hay are typically what the what the rabbits would eat, . So very, very, very interesting. Quick, note about guinea pigs is obviously guinea pigs live in very dense vegetation and are probably a bit more adapted to more tougher, more fibrous grasses, than rabbits, who are normally eating, if you like, more meadow type grasses.
Grass can be damaged, so this is important, how you pick it and things, so this is why you don't really want to use mown grass, mown grass has been pretty well mangled, and as a result, it'll start to leak fluid, it'll ferment very quickly if left in a pile. And so essentially, if you feed mown grass on a very short of just a few hours, you'll be feeding effectively silage, and this will have big effects on on the on the gut bacteria and can lead to gut upsets. So mown grass probably is worth avoiding, and simply look at relatively undamaged grass picked by by, if you like, harvested by by pulling and picking.
Also, and try and avoid contamination, so this may be through spraying, and, best places in the countryside, particularly, you may find this is from the edge of the fields and things, you may find it's sprayed, and of course in, town parks, you may find this has been contaminated by dogs urinating. So really important that if you do harvest from public areas, that the grass is washed, and that you kind of know a bit about where it's coming from, to to avoid obvious high level contamination. And I said, how's it gathered?
Replicate the animal in the wild, and we're gonna talk about the teeth in a moment, and how do they do it? They use their front teeth, they they they they they basically chew it off at ground level and then chew from there. We need to be replicating that when we we pick the grass.
Why we don't give enough fibre, well, we're gonna get various problems, we're gonna get obesity, we're gonna get dental disease, we we may get gut disease. So in terms of gut disease, we're gonna talk about that later on too, they are a component, not the most important area of gut motility, but a component of gut motility, . However, obesity is a major component in gut disease, and dental disease is a major component of gut disease, so these two areas will impact on it.
We may see a problem with gut flora, Grass in particular can be linked to bloat, although again I would caution against that to some extent, but be very careful about how you introduce grass into the diet, because too rapid a change, just like in people, can lead to effects, and of course we may see things like, if you like, a true diarrhoea, if you're really upset the gut flora enough. But essentially low fibre and confinement, and we talked about exercise earlier, cause obesity. Obesity can also be caused by things like influenced by the sex of a rabbit, we see, do see higher levels in females than males, neutering will also do it, so neutered females really are at very high risk of becoming obese.
This is partly linked to when we spay the females, . During, if you like, the growth phase and things, and therefore when we do spay, we should be giving out dietary advice, so just like in other species, we neuter, give out the dietary advice and try and avoid that initial you know, reduction exercise straight after surgery and the if you like the the increased likelihood of obesity with the neutering, and hopefully we can avoid many of these problems from that. Can be affected by coronary disease where hormonal, less common in rabbits, and of course osteoarthritis which is very common, and osteoarthritis is both a it's both exacerbated by obesity, with increased loading, and it is also, Helps it develop by reducing the ability to exercise and move around.
How do we assess this, well obviously we can do body weight, but obviously this is a, an individual thing, you need to be looking at more than one figure, you need to be looking at . Long-term sequences of body weight, so really important part of the annual check, is to get that body weight and see how it's changing, and we, we kind of ally that to body condition, and this is a really useful little tool, it's rabbit seismometer, and we can look at the rabbit's shape, we can look at the weight, and we can marry those two together, so once we know what the, you like, condition score 3 is in terms of weight for that individual, then we can do much more just by by using the numbers. And in terms of the effects of obesity, as mentioned, musculoskeletal system, again, .
It it tends to rather actually cause joint problems, tend to really exacerbate problems. There's a couple of reasons with that too, one is that they've obviously the easy one is is increased loading on diseased joints, more weight they're carrying, the more those joints have to do. There is also an effect from reduction of activity, reduction of activity, of course, can cause obesity, but also once an animal becomes obese, it tends to exercise less, and therefore we we see see things like that too, and we'll talk a little bit more skeleton later, but what rabbits do, because their calcium levels are so labile, is if they're not using an area, they'll start taking the calcium out of it, so we start getting reduced bone density in areas that aren't being used, that of course makes them more prone to damage.
We'll see reduced muscle bulk, this is gonna have a prob an issue with destabilising, potentially damaged joints and and and worsening things again. And the other thing too is almost certainly. It's the same situation in people where we know in people that fats are a really prime source of inflammatory mediators, and in people there's a lot of study that obesity is linked into worsening of arthritic pain in non-weight bearing joints, and this is very likely the same in pets as well.
So that's a factor as well within this. And again, if you've got poor calcium in a diet, which is again often the type of diets which will cause obesity, may be poor in calcium, we can see problems with the bones with that too. We may see cardiorespiratory problems, so effectively at these tend to boil down to space.
Again, cover the anatomy later on there. Rabbits have very restricted chest cavity, and if they have that filled with fat as well, then we may see, especially from, mediastinal fat, or if the abdomen is enlarged with abdominal fat and pressing forward onto the diaphragm, then that chesicle or thoracic cavity is much reduced. So if we have subclinical pneumonia, and this is really common in pet rabbits, then it's going to really exacerbate those problems a lot, really make anaesthesia much more difficult because we've got chest compression before we start, and will affect too how we position for surgery, because we don't want to, increase that load on the chest while while we're operating.
Cardiac effects, well, no, very few direct ones known, but very likely compared to other species, and of course atherosclerosis can occur in rabbits as well, albeit not so common, but that may also be because we're not really looking quite so hard at the moment. And here we go, here's our chest scum cavity, and we can see just how small this is relative to a whole rabbit, and fat in here, especially this mediastinum, can be quite restrictive. In terms of the liver, we do see hepatic lipidosis, where we get filling of the liver with fat, this is obviously going to affect liver function, therefore digestion, we may see secondary effects, and we do see bacterial and yeast invasion up the bile ducts, and hepatitis resulting from this, where the liver's immune function is, is, is compromised.
Friability of the liver, a fatty liver is much more friable than a normal liver. Means that we sometimes we'll see liver rupture, especially in poor rabbits who are picked up by their stomach, and, you know, this can this obviously can be a cause of sudden death. And of course, we see a lot of diseases where rabbit goes off its food.
Think cat, and if a fat rabbit gets its food for more than 24 hours, then it's gonna be in serious trouble, that may be from dental disease or gut stasis, but we may end up with more problems than we, we, we, we, we think we may have started with. And dental disease, of course, open routed molars, open root incisors too, but important here about molars, . Without fibre, with a lack of constant grinding, or it's designed to, then they're simply not gonna wear down quickly enough.
So the teeth keep growing, they're not being worn down, the jaws are pushed apart, there's back pressure on the roots, and we start seeing root disease developing. There is some genetic influence, particularly in regards to head shape, where we've we've, particularly brachycephalic, where we have the same size and number of teeth, but we have, We don't have the space for them and that can be a problem too, but primarily dentality is down to diet and primarily within that calcium has been shown to have an influence as well, but primarily fibre is the major problem in the development of dental disease. And we may also see grooming, problems, so a fat rabbit may find it very hard to turn.
Similarly, a lot of the other problems that that stem from from being an obese rabbit, so discomfort, osteoarthritis spine, abdominal pain, all these things too, may mean that this rabbit cannot turn and take a cecotroph, and we get we get build-up of faeces on the back end. And therefore we can end up with a fly strike in in the summer months, as the flies lay their eggs in these large masses of cecotroph built up on the back end, so a rabbit can't take them off there. Why don't they take them off later?
We'll talk about that later on. So next bit is fresh food, so it's in addition to the grass side of it, and of course, fresh food adds things like interest and enrichment, and there's nothing wrong with enriching the diet, making it a bit more interesting to take and to eat, in terms of, if you like, mental stimulation. It also provides different micronutrients, and it provides water, of course, and that's really important.
How much do we feed, well, again, we've seen that picture before of volume and comparatively a lot less than we're feeding of hay and grass. We don't wanna feed too much because we want to avoid selective feeding, and we don't want to reduce the fibre consumption, and we do have to be very careful of a simple sugar, intake, that can have an effect on teeth and then again is another driver of obesity. So we may have seen Bugs Bunny, eat lots of carrots, or in the cartoons, but you've gotta remember that Bugs Bunny is, one, not real, and second, that carrots these days are very different to carrots previously, where they have been selected for the higher sugar, sweeter varieties, and so effectively, nutritionally, carrot is now regarded more as a fruit than as a vegetable, and certainly not a high fibre vegetable.
So in terms of fresh food composition quality, again depends on species to some extent there, and. But again, look at what they normally eat, and what do they eat in the wild to to back up their, their their their hay and grass, they'll eat a lot of weeds, so high fibre, rich herbage. They may eat some vegetables, they find them, they eat some roots if they they pull, and then they get some roots coming up too, .
They will meet fruit occasionally, but, only, probably only at certain seasons of the year, and not a major constituent of a diet, and root veg, again, unlikely to be a major part, in, in a rabbit, wild rabbit's diet. Mentioned to you about the difference between commercial and wild nutri nutrients, nutrient content in different species of plant and how that's changing of course. What about where you get it from?
Well, If you buy from a supermarket, they're gonna be more commercial varieties of fruit and veg, these are going to be more exacerbated from other sources. And similarly to, I would always caution about buying non-organic vegetables, I've used to keep invertebrates a lot, and it was really interesting, if I bought non-organic fruit and veg for them, I regularly had problems with colony die-out issues where there were chemicals still within there, so just to caution that as well for regular intake of pets. Hopefully things have changed since then.
In terms of wild picking, of course we may have contamination mentioned the grass. We may have quality issues, depending on, you know, weather conditions at the time, climate cha, well, whether they've been very dry, whether they've been, very wet, those will affect the quality quite a lot too, and how it's stored, of course, will have a big problem too. And different effects of drying.
One effect of drying is that plants that we may think, which would not be toxic when they are fresh, because they're so toxic, the rabi won't eat them, a good example being like ragwort and, in, in, in, in fresh form, they won't touch it. If it's dried, they might well eat at that point, and that can cause problems. So, you wanna have some idea what you're feeding, and again of course with foraging, you've gotta be quite good at identifying these plants, this is a really useful chart, I'd thoroughly recommend .
Using that for base, and that's quite good, so feed and mix, feed small quantities of those, to avoid selective feeding, if at all possible. I mentioned toxicity, and one of the myths about rabbits is they know what they should eat, . So should we, but we don't, and, the .
Rabbits are probably no different, they will selectively feed to what, what, to the high calorie things, so they will unbalance their diet if they're given too much rich or simple sugar food. Similarly, as mentioned, they will eat stuff, but it's toxic for them, if it's say, for example, dried, it's an unnatural form, if there's nothing else to eat, and they're really hungry. If they're curious, and one issue that may be that they have not sufficient mental stimulation, not sufficient foraging, and they're simply just curious and have a nibble on something, so you may experiment, it may be presented wrongly, and of course too, there are different parts of a plant may have different toxicity levels, and again, be very careful, just because one part of a plant is safe, and another plant may not be.
Be very careful too with houseplants, . One reason why rabbits may chew is because they have a lack of fibre in their diet, that can be quite hard to provide indoors, and therefore we may have a rabbit who starts experimenting with house plants, and some of those are distinctly toxic. Outside, probably less of a problem, but again, common sense of what we're presented with.
And again, useful posters, these action for rabbits ones, what's safe and what's not, are really pretty good, good places to start from as a guide. Now I've mentioned calcium a couple of times too, there's a lot of mythology about calcium but some very good recent research to really help us with this. So basically there is no proven link of calcium levels to sludging in the urine or to urothiasis.
And therefore we can say that there is no evidence that high dietary calcium foods lead to stones or sludge. We've gotta be careful too, a lot of people restrict calcium on this basis, but what we do know is that low dietary calcium can affect bone density, and does, and I've seen cases of pathological fractures from rabbits overly restricted in calcium. What we do know, they also have a very weird calcium metabolism compared to a dog and cat, and that is they control almost entirely on outflow.
So they eat a lot of cows, they're designed rabbit diet is not particularly rich in calcium, they take everything in, they then excrete the excess through, through the, almost entirely through the urine. Herbivores are designed to do this, and if you look at any herbivore urine, it's cloudy with calcium crystals in it, and rabbit's no different to that too. What there is, and the recent studies have shown, is there's a probable link between dietary levels of calcium and the need to drink.
So in other words, the higher the amount of calcium in the diet, the more the rabbit needs to drink to clear that through, to be producing a sufficient volume of urine, that the crystals in there are not building up to to irritant levels on the bladder lining and causing proteins to be produced, and therefore getting coalescence of the crystals over those. So, more calcium, more water. Now, you can link that in too about activity levels and urination frequency, so if they're inactive, let's say they've got osteoarthritis.
And they're not urinating enough, then. And again, think about posture they've got to go to to urinate when they lift their back ends and squirt the urine out, you know, if you've got a bad back, that's a pretty hard one to do. So an an active rabbit, not urinating very often, the crisps are in contact with bladder wall for longer as well, another risk factor for the development of this.
So you want to encourage urination, you want to encourage drinking. And you can use that, after that you can feed as almost as much calcium you like there too. However, it is sensible not to overfeed high calcium food, because it gets away from some of those risk factors, we don't have to drink quite so much, we don't have to urinate quite so much.
So don't overfeed high calcium food, watch the drinking a lot too, and most of it's controlled on drinking levels and urination frequency, more than just simply avoiding high calcium. Another myth too, about too much grass leading to bloat, again, we've been talking about this briefly as we've gone through already. Rabbits are designed to eat grass, and I've seen this in many places about don't give grass to your rabbit, however, be careful about introducing it too quickly.
So if you have a rabbit who's not used to grass, suddenly giving it an enormous quantity of young spring grass is going to potentially cause a problem. So that can probably go for anything really, you know, if you suddenly introduce a whole load of something into a diet that's they're not used to, we're gonna get it, we're gonna get changes in the flora, we're gonna get problems from that. So basically if they're not used to grass, introduce it gradually and ideally get them on a good hay basis for a diet first of all, so the fibre levels are good in the diet, and then introduce it from there to when the gut is in a much more stable position.
But certainly they should be able to be able to eat grass quite happily. Rule of thumb, always introduce new foods gradually. We spoke about grassicas and goitres and stuff, this is, partly a guinea pig thing, but also mentioning rabbits can affect the thyroid, it's because brassica's low in iodine, and we get all this from thyroid hormone.
It's not really a clinical issue in rabbits, I mean hypothyroidism's a very, very rare diagnosis in a rabbit. You could if you wanted to supplement iodine, but there's really no need. Brassicas are actually quite a good component of a diet, they're for using vegetables, brassicas are really quite useful within that, they're high fibre, they've got good calcium levels, they've got, they're, they're really good, good food to give.
But don't do it in excess, that's again, get the idea of balance, if you overfeed something, you're gonna have a problem, if you only feed that, you're gonna have a problem, so that's part of a diet. And water, water is obviously essential. Now to some extent they'll get this from a diet, and many, many wild rabbits probably will get almost all their water from a diet, but we've got, we're using food that's maybe been stored for a while.
In terms of the case, hey, it's been artificially dried, they're not gonna have so much water there too, so we have to give them water as well, and it is important, the studies that showed the link between calcium and drinking, Also looked at how to encourage rabbits to drink, and part of that is how the water's presented to them, and rabbits in general prefer a bowl to a drinker. If they used to drink it, they're probably OK with that, but actually even many of those rabbits. Drank more if they were given a bowl instead.
Similarly too We've gotta look at where we put the bowls, and look at some of the social and behavioural effects. So firstly, water is one of those resources that rabbits guard. If we have a, a structure within within the group that or a pair where one is dominating that, the other 1 may not be able to drink as much, so we need to be looking at providing enough resource in there so that all the rabbits can access water.
Again, think cat, one per animal plus one is a good place to be, and where. We tend to put bowls and things near the front of the cages, near the front of it if it runs, near the front of the arch, because it's really easy for us. We just have to reach in, grab it, change it, but actually that means a rabbit has to come into an open space normally to take the water.
If there's anything even vaguely fearful happening around it, it's less likely to, it's going to drink less. So put some water, sources at the back of a hutch in the, in the, you know, in a place where it's easy for the rabbit to get to. And also, it's perfectly possible to mention about soaking hay for preventing respiratory disease.
Why not soak the hay also to give some extra water, and all the fresh fruit can be fed wet, and again, they're going to drink more water that way too. So let's move on to the next need, which is the environment. So, we can typically look at the things like temperature, ventilation, space, and a hiding, ability.
And typically we keep rabbits in one of two ways, usually indoor or outdoor, and it doesn't matter which one we use, we've got to provide those basic parameters to help them. So in terms of indoor keeping. What are the advantages, well, basically it's a lot safer for them, there should be less, interaction with predators, hopefully the pet dogs of the house will be, somewhat, kept away and also be a well trained not to go near the rabbit.
In addition, there's less risk of escape. If they do go out for a run, they should be still be enclosed to a house. They should have protection from weather extremes.
However, Temperature and humidity are important, and typically, especially in winter, our houses tend to be quite warm and quite dry. Just like in other species, we may therefore see, we developed a low grade, dehydration, so really important that people keeping rabbits in centrally heated, dry houses, are either humidifying the air, or even reducing the temperature in the rabbit room slightly, or, of course, providing extra water, extra ability to drink. It is very easy to keep rabbits, in in this way, it means you don't have to go outside, it's much easier to change them and do things and and work with them, and of course it's much easier to handle them and be closer to what lots of people want to do.
Again, does a rabbit want this? I mean, we've been talking today about socialisation of rabbit, about how much they want to be handled and how they find being handled. If you have a non-socialized rabbit that resents being handled, actually, is it the fairest thing to do, to be keeping it that close to people and to be doing that, so maybe again, this is for a certain type of rabbit only.
They obviously have more exposure to eating hazard. And of course, they're gonna get virtually no UV unless you start a set of artificial lights, which has issues with electrics and things, so, . That can be a problem.
Now, whether that's an issue or not is is really open to conjecture, that would probably depend on the calcium in the diet, and the type of vitamin D that's provided alongside it, but again, may be a problem and in the early calcium studies, there were some issues linked into UV levels within sort of, you know, like garden hutches and stuff. They will, should have less ability to graze and forage indoors, although that can be overcome with enrichment feeding and adapting and things. And of course we mentioned ventilation.
We suffer a lot, I think COVID really brought home to people that we suffer a lot from respiratory disease because we have poorly ventilated houses, this affects rabbits as well. And if you open up a typical rabbit hutch, you'll find they've got a sleeping quarter where they do a secret trophy and stuff, and the . Often very, very poorly ventilated, and some of you will get a lot of smell from those areas as you open the lid and put your head inside there.
So, ventilation is important to provide for these animals, and again, needs to be addressed within the house if kept indoors. In terms of outdoor keeping, well, again, we should have more ability to forage, but again, remember they do need to be able to access cover, we don't want like a big open run in the middle of a a a grass patch, because that is gonna have nowhere to go to and that's gonna be a very fearful setting for them. Even in the UK they should have more access to UV light from that, and of course, they should have a lot more ventilation in an open area, with a breeze and everything else there.
Space is an interesting one, because very often, sort of setups in houses, they actually have more space indoors than outdoors, where it can be quite difficult to provide a very large run and keep it moving around the garden to access new feeding each day, unless you have a permanent run, in which case, you've got to be looking at the flooring quite a lot, more on that in a second. That should give you more ability to keep groups outdoors, and again mention that typical setup where in the world where they're normally in groups of 6 to 8, not pairs. And hopefully it means you should be able to get more natural behaviours in outdoor rabbits.
They're, they are more difficult to handle, more difficult to be directly in contact with outdoors, normally, it does vary with the rabbit, it does vary with the person and the setup to some extent, but typically, these rabbits will have less interference from the owners, less handling, and maybe a better setup for those who haven't been well socialised er within that. There are of course increased risks from things like escape. If they get out of that run, they're almost certainly going to be able to escape, from a garden as well.
And of course there's more potential from predators, from dogs from outside, from foxes, that type of thing, so it can be a problem with that too. Digging as well can be an issue, and if you are keeping rabbits outdoors, you really do need to underwire the, enclosure to make sure they can't dig out, and that can be a big problem. With less contact, it can be harder to detect early stage disease, and of course it can be much harder to catch them, examine them and treat them.
And I would stress to anybody who keeps their rabbits outdoors is have them trained at the very least, into a box, and that's relatively easy, you can have a pet carrier, you can feed them. Into the carrier on a regular basis, so they're easily got into there, then you can simply put a door on there and the rabbit is caught. You don't want capturing a rabbit to become a drama every time something happens, or that the only time they go near a pet carrier is when they're going to the vet or having a bad thing happen to them, so they they avoid it completely.
It's also not suitable for long-haired breeds that require constant grooming because again that handling is really difficult, the, the, the fur's gonna become very matted, it's gonna get, often mud in it and stuff, and that can be a big problem. And that is an issue too with outdoors, is the weather has got to be taken into consideration. You need to know where the prevailing weather comes from.
That you need to be able to keep them sheltered from extremes. So there are some really good covers these days for hutches for avoiding excess sun and for avoiding excess cold. Drinkers can be covered in foil, to prevent them from freezing, or reduce freezing.
But it can be a real problem with extremes of weather that there are certain levels you really do struggle to keep the temperature down if it's real really during a heat wave, so maybe if you have to prepare to move them during weather extremes. And if they're really wet, then then the the the the the the ground can become very poached, can become very muddy, and they don't do well in that either, and we can see foot problems develop from that. And before we move on to health, I must admit I have not mentioned about foot problems.
Studies have been done to show that the substrates that don't cause polio dermatitis, which is common, . Our grass and hay, which shouldn't come as a great surprise, that's what rabbit feet were designed to walk on, so outdoor keeping on those is really great. Indoor keeping can be quite tricky, with the fact that things like carpets, solid floors and stuff can, can all lead to polo dermatitis.
So even indoors, we do need to have large a main area of keeping to be basically covered in hay or straw to reduce polo dermatitis formation. So final welfare needs is, is, is maintenance of health. And in this bit, I'm just gonna look at some areas of anatomy and physiology and how they link into disease that we might be seeing.
These are the main areas we're gonna have a look at there, today. So skeleton, upper and lower respiratory systems, dentition, gut, and ears. So.
Sign of osteoarthritis, which is probably a main skeletal disease we'll see, is this is kind of linked into ageing, so, you know, older rabbits are more likely to show problems, but, Not the only thing, obesity we've been talking about and the development of exacerbation of arthritic problems, but the lack of exercise, often from where we're keeping them, predisposing to obesity, and again with socialisation, the lack of handling and the damage early on. So although we might think about osteoarthritis being an ageing disease, the roots of it are often in very early age with handling and back damage. And throughout life as obesity develops and lack of exercise, so it's a whole lifestyle problem.
The other thing we all kind of know as as as vets is that rabbit bones are very brittle, very easily fractured, and damn hard to repair. Now, is that the case in the wild? The answer is no, if you see a wild rabbit skeleton and it's a pretty solid thing, the bones are pretty normal compared to any other species' bones.
So what we're looking at is the captive rabbit not being properly, skeletalized. Why is that gonna happen? Well, we may have calcium issues within the diet, we have over-restriction 10 of calcium potentially, we may have lack of exercise and a rabbit's ability to decalcify if it If, if it's, if it, doesn't, .
Use certain limbs or certain areas of the body, and of course we may have the type of injuries where we do tend to get spiralling fractures, the twisting, falling type of injuries, the foot caught in the sofa and falling type of injury, that type of thing, so, you know, it's a type of injury as well compared to whatever, but primarily we're looking at almost a decalcified skeleton a lot of the time, leading to a lot of these problems. Nothing's been with wild rabbits, there has been some studies looking at the calcium in the diet and the blood, because it was proposed that wild rabbits would control their blood calcium a bit more tightly than domestic rabbits. This, this did show actually that wild rabbits have pretty variable calcium levels too, so it's not just a captive rabbit issue with with the blood calcium, but what it does mean is they all walk a bit of a tightrope, with wild and and captive with the calcium levels of a diet.
The difference is in the wild is that the rabbit can go and search for calcium sources. They can eat mineral, and you will see rabbits licking and chewing on on on on on minerals they find in the soil, whereas of course in captivity, they can't do that by choice, we have to provide it. So if we overly restrict the calcium levels, we can't replenish if we need to, well they can't replenish themselves if they need to.
And so sometimes we do see more chance of bone atrophy from that. So upper respiratory tract, again, we have various issues from this too, they've got quite a complicated system. The nostrils are narrow and sensitive, they've also got these very tortuous er nasal passages, narrow, complicated again, large amount of secretion, and they can do something that's really cool, and this does help with some of our anaesthetic monitoring, so people use conscious catography and stuff, but basically, they have, they separate in and out air.
They have very, very complicated sinus and nasal passages. And the inflow takes the air through the lateral passages, through the more complicated turbinates through the sinuses, so the air is basically filtered, it's warmed, it's humidified, and we get some antibacterial activity from like nitrous oxide in the in the sinuses. And so it goes in through those areas, and it comes out through the larger, wider central passages.
So in other words, in and out flow, air is separated. That also means is that there's a disruption to that anatomy, is that flow is also is also affected, and that's going to affect the whole respiratory function. So rest of it too you can go to a very narrow oropharynx, very large tongue base, and so the result is that rabbits find mouth breathing very, very difficult indeed.
So if you see a mouth breathing rabbit, it's an incredible distress, it's incredibly severe respiratory disease, and you do need to do something about that. So if we do some cut-throughs rabbit, we can see what we're talking about with this, and again, look these lateral areas, these very complicated turbinates, it's the level of the base of the incisor, and we can see these larger, more central areas for the outflow of the air. As we go further back, then we start seeing the big sinuses, so this is the dorsal recess, the ventral recess, the maxillary sinus, and again, these big sinus areas where they're sort of warming, humidifying and immune function.
Again, cut just bef just rostral to the to the molars. And further back through the molars again we're looking at the sinuses now closed, and we're now looking again with just general. Extensive turbinate structure, so really quite a complicated set of nasal passages and, Obviously with secretions and stuff which are quite thick, gloopy things in rabbits, you can see how very easy it's supposed to get gummed up and to be, be closed off.
Looking at the oropharynx, again, we see this large tongue base here, we can see this very narrow pharynx here, indicated by the wire going through there, and here's the opening to the to the er larynx, and it's very difficult to disengage from the nasopharynx there and allow mouth breathing through here. And head shape has a big effect on this too, so if we decide to breed brachyphalic, we squash the nose, and what we do is we get dental compressions mentioned earlier, we get the nasal patches become even more short, even narrower, and they're much more likely to get blocked by secretions and things too. In addition, the tear ducts, which are quite tortuous to begin with, and flow through the, ventral part of the maxillary sinus, become more tortuous and more likely to be blocked.
And we also get, we'll talk about ears in a moment, but more likely we can get occlusion of the eustachian tubes, and therefore more likely to get buildup of, of secretions within the ear as well. Lower respiratory, we've been talking about this with regard to irritation stuff too, it's very narrow larynx, the trachea, by the way, does have complete rings, so if you're intubating, don't, don't cough, our thoracic cavity, as mentioned, very small, very restricted, very small lung volume and stuff, very narrow inlet, and the lungs are really compressed and not able to, Expand, and have quite a reserved volume that you'd have in other mammals, structure otherwise very similar to mammal to other mammals. So dental disease, again, why is this so common, well, again, we've mentioned this too earlier on, partly calcium, but mainly down to fibre, it's open rooted teeth, it's constant growth and they're designed for this high fibre grinding diet, spending several hours a day just grinding food and grinding food.
And doing that. Important to note that the incisors and molars in a normal rabbit are not in contact at the same time. Typically, they'll be like this here, where we have the molars engaged, but the incisor not engaged.
And so effectively what they do is they have these very loose, temporomandibular joints, they'll. When they want to pick food up off the up with the incisors, they will they will disengage the jaw and move it, move it rostrally so that it can be be be be incised in contact and to chew that way, and then they'll reset so the molars can can then chew the food. So again, important, why, how to prevent dental disease, knowing the cause of this now, we can look at effective breeding and avoiding getting these these very bracky rabbits, we can look at calcium levels in the diet, and by the way, a study has been done recently showing that tooth particles that sort of break off, little micro-tooth particles break off during chewing, are swallowed by the rabbit, are digested and do add into this general calcium metabolism.
And of course we can look at fibre and provide adequate fibre levels. So Diam's diet, hay and grass again, some greens, and minimal pellet. Couple that with an active lifestyle, potentially outdoors or provision of UV otherwise too, really important, and we can help that too by pre-purchasing education of getting the right diet straight away and of choosing the correct breed straight away and follow up with regular checks to make sure the teeth are developing properly and there are not issues developing with with a dentition.
So we're talking about high fibre, this is digested obviously by by the gut, which has adaptation specifically for this, to do this primarily, a very large fermenting fat of a large intestine that that digests that that that for them. So proximate intestine, very similar to a dog and cat. Very similar functions, very similar mechanism of action and motility.
Typically food spends 6 to 8 hours in a rabbit's stomach, and 40 to 80 minutes passing through a small intestine, so it's quite a rapid passage through those areas. Then enters the hindgut, which is where most of the stuff actually occurs, and the proximal colon is the first part, with the cecum, this is designed for mixing and separating fibre, it has three parts. One is the ampulla, and this has a single term meal section.
And then we have a fusus coli. A fusus coli is probably the most important region to us. This is the pacemaker region of the gut.
So rabbit not only, or if you like, ferments in reverse, whether it be end of it, end of a first digestive cycle, it will set the pace of the gut on, on, from a back end as well. Now the reason for that is so that it can separate the different types of faeces, because from the faeces coli, the the the faeces or even the food enters the distal colon. So motility setback for is coli, this is a really highly innervated area, big rich blood supply, and it's influenced by external substances, so typically prostaglandins, aldosterone, minerocorticoid, and stress hormones.
And it Its use primarily is to vary rate between hard and soft faeces phases. Now there's a little bit of influence on the ileocolic valve and fibre for for setting that, but primarily it's the fuses curli dissolver dissolver motility speed. Hard faeces, obviously, with typical dry faeces, the final end product of digestion, the soft faeces are the cecotrophs, which a rabbit should then turn around and re-ingest.
So essentially what happens with the cecotrophs is the rabbit gets a signal to say, a cecotrope's on its way, turn round and eat it. So, again, back to this, gut motility is set by dietary intake, fibre levels, slightly. Some influence that too, but not massive.
Big effects, stress hormones, inflammatory metabolites, and hydration, electrolyte stasis affecting mineral or corticoid levels. So why do you get post-op gut stasis? And that's because we're putting rabbit in a stressful situation, we are causing inflammation when we operate, and we are probably getting alterations of renal blood flow, we may well have fluid balance issues, and that's going to affect the mineroid corticoid release from the kidney, and therefore get another effect on the fusus coli.
Seek a trophy, as I mentioned, they get a signal saying softie's on the way, turn around and eat it. It was quite a relief to find, because seotropes are quite revolting, that rabbits do not choose to eat this, and if you present a secret trope to a rabbit, it won't touch it, it finds it utterly repulsive. They will take it on that immediate ref reflex, turn around and eat.
If anything interrupts that, so that maybe they can't turn because they're obese, maybe because they can't turn because they've got osteoarthritis, maybe they can't turn because have inadequate space to turn in. Or they have a tongue trapped by by dental spikes, or abdominal pain, or something along those areas, then the reflex is broken, and they won't take the cecotrope, and it just simply stays on their back end. And therefore, this is why, when we see fly strike, we see secretre buildup, we've gotta look back to why they are not, what's breaking that reflex, why they're not taking that too, so we need to do complete checkovers, we're probably need to do a lot of body imaging, and we also need to do a full husbandry review.
And moving on to rabbit ears, again, everybody loves these, this is what makes a rabbit a rabbit, doesn't it? This is where, again, breeding comes in too. Lop-eared rabbits again are really came to a fore in the 19th century as well, mainly because for food purposes they actually grow faster.
There's some papers, showing, showing this to be a fact. But of course within the pet world, they became combined with brachycephaly, and they they all look very cute like that too, so they became very popular in the Pet World. But there are underlying anatomical differences of ears between lops and non-lops.
And this is the classic picture of a lopped of a non-lop rabbit, where we have this, these sets of cartilages, which telescope into each other, producing a sort of like a locking tube, like a, like a telescope, which is rigid and supported. Now, in the knot of a lopped rabbit, we have a gap between two of cartilages here, it's soft walled area, which is probably about 2 to 3 millimetres long, and of course it's soft-walled, the telescoping doesn't work, and there'll be ear flops at this point. And therefore we end up with a like a folded tube, which can't drain.
Bracchycephaly has an effect too, and that is that, as I mentioned earlier, the eustachian tubes don't drain properly, so therefore secretions don't drain that way too. So we may well have a rabbit who can't drain ear secretions from either through the canal or through a eustachian tube. We've gotta go somewhere.
So basic ear disease we see is down to anatomical problems and not inflammatory disease, and it leads to build-up of curumin, either within the external canal, we may see in lop-eared rabbits, we may see formation of these diverticuli. Swelling of the base of the ear, or entering into the, middle ear, and even even leading into middle ear disease and otitis media, in some of these cases, but it's an anatomical disease, it's not purely inflammatory, so very different aetiology to dogs and therefore a very different treatment. So in summary, we're gonna treat rabbits, we're gonna need to keep them, we need to understand that normal wild rabbit, we need to appreciate how.
The biology of a normal wild rabbit informs keeping. And it's the welfare needs of a pet rabbit, and also disease formation captive rabbits, and in the next talk, the next module, we're gonna look at how we'll we'll how that applies in the clinic when we treat them. Thank you for listening.
