References
The chubby bunny: a closer look at obesity in the pet rabbit
Abstract
The effects of obesity on the health of cats and dogs are well recognised and obese rabbits are susceptible to many of the same problems. There are, however, some conditions related to obesity that are more rabbit specific. This article looks at the deleterious effects of obesity specific to the health of rabbits and how to identify, prevent and manage cases of obesity in this species.
Unlike dogs and cats, obese rabbits are not prone to the development of diabetes (Harcourt-Brown, 2012) however, obesity can predispose them to many other health issues. The pathogenicity of obesity in rabbits is quite complex with many obese rabbits presenting with a combination of any of the following problems:
The impact each of these conditions has on the rabbit depends on their chronicity and severity and each rabbit on presentation to the clinic will need varying degrees of intervention to correct underlying illness before a weight loss programme can be instituted.
Cessation of caecotrophy — rabbits thrive on high quantities of low nutrient fodder such as grass. The adaptation that allows rabbits to gain sufficient nutrients from such low nutrient material is caecotrophy. This strategy involves the essential but indigestible fibre passing rapidly through the gastrointestinal tract to be excreted as waste in the form of small, dry faecal pellets. The digestible material is passed retrograde into the caecum to undergo bacterial fermentation to extract more nutrients. After undergoing further microbial digestion this ingesta is formed into caecotrophs which are released from the caecum and eaten directly from the rectum. As highlighted by Flecknell and Meredith (2006), caecotrophy provides rabbits with many essential nutrients including:
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