Rabbit advice to pet sitters

A rabbit called Henry came in to see me this evening. He had recently been to a rabbit boarding kennel for a week whilst his owners were away. They had just collected him and he had a badly infected eye and a mass of faeces around his bottom.

It is natural for rabbits to eat their faeces every morning. They produce a sticky lump first thing in the morning that provides all the bacteria to help digest their very high roughage diet during the day. If the rabbit is too large (we do see a lot of obese bunnies!) or if they suffer with teeth problems due to an imbalanced diet (not enough good quality hay), they may not eat this lump as they cannot reach beyond their large bellies and end up like Henry with a very mucky bottom.

Henry’s owners were very upset that he had not been checked by the kennel owners and asked if I knew of local petsitters for the next time they were away. Our receptionist is a pet sitter, which is great for both her and the clients. My advice to pet sitting rabbits, is to understand their digestive system and always check your boarding bunnies’ bottom before the owners return. If they are unaware of the problem, explain  about rabbit digestion. I have described a bit more in my main website http://www.petsittingadvice.co.uk/feedingrabbit.htm

This entry was posted on 05/01/2008 at 11:43 pm and is filed under pet sitting advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.