Coccidiosis in my Meat rabbits need advice

[Anniewho6]

Here is the whole story..
I had a beautiful litter of New Zealand born July 17th, 2014, from my 7 month old doe. Total litter: 8 and one died. She did great for her first time all seemed good. She seemed healthy and all my other rabbits seemed healthy. Once they were about 6 to 8 weeks old something very weird happened one day.
One of the babies lost what looked like a large square patch of hair. The exposed tissue/skin looked red and hot. There was no open wound. No blood. This literately happened over night.
My rabbits have large cages and are outside. I live in Florida with hot weather during the summer.
Since there was a wasp nest near by I assumed maybe one of the wasps bit the rabbit and it had some weird reaction. So I decided to cull the rabbit because it looked like it was suffering.

Now my eyes were open. I could see the other baby rabbits did not look healthy. They seemed like they were slowly losing their hair and under weight. A couple days later I was distraught. I had to know what was wrong with my baby rabbits so I called the local vet. I brought a poop sample in and one of the babies who looked the most sick so they could examine her. Low and behold the sample showed coccidiosis. We were prescribed medication and doses to treat them. $$$ a little costly I might add. We treated all adult rabbits and decided to cull the entire litter and we did not eat them.
We were advised not to eat any of the rabbits treated with medication until @ 30 days were up from the time of last treatment. We cleaned all cages and feeders/waters.

So we continued to breed rabbits after their treatment and 30 days were up.

Long story short, as of today 1/14/2015- Same doe and same thing.. babies losing hair and under weight.
One of my other does: New mother - she is a New Zealand and Flemish mix- she had a great delivery 8 babies- 2 runts died -same thing they are losing their hair.
The litters are now 2 months old. I am again distraught. It always seems to show up in the younger rabbits right about 6 weeks old or later.
I did however notice the White New Zealand now shows signs of hair loss on face. When it happened before none of my adult rabbits showed any signs of sickness.


My advice needed is:
1) do I need to cull all my rabbits and start over?
2) Continued to fight the coccidiosis in all the rabbits and hope they wont deliver another batch of sick babies.
3) Is there some kind of special medication my vet does not know about to help fix and cure the coccidiosis? If so is it safe for us to eat our rabbits after treatment with this different medication?
4) This always bothers me. Is it ok to eat a rabbit that is infected with coccidiosis?
5) What special precautions do you take for your Meat rabbits to stay strong, healthy and parasite free.
6) One last requests for advice: If your rabbits are outside in the hot temperatures how do you keep their water bottles from getting algae and bacteria inside them? This also seems to be another concern of mine. Someone told me diluted bleach..?

I appreciated any advice on 1 - 6 above.

Thank You,
Ann

 

[SA Farm]

My advice needed is:
1) do I need to cull all my rabbits and start over?
2) Continued to fight the coccidiosis in all the rabbits and hope they wont deliver another batch of sick babies.
3) Is there some kind of special medication my vet does not know about to help fix and cure the coccidiosis? If so is it safe for us to eat our rabbits after treatment with this different medication?
4) This always bothers me. Is it ok to eat a rabbit that is infected with coccidiosis?
5) What special precautions do you take for your Meat rabbits to stay strong, healthy and parasite free.
6) One last requests for advice: If your rabbits are outside in the hot temperatures how do you keep their water bottles from getting algae and bacteria inside them? This also seems to be another concern of mine. Someone told me diluted bleach..?

I appreciated any advice on 1 - 6 above.

Thank You,
Ann

I'm so sorry you've been going through this!
1-2) Is up to you - if you want to persevere and try different things to cure them, by all means continue to do so. If you're just fed up and want to start from scratch, you can do that too, just know that you may be facing the same problems with new rabbits.
3) There are some natural preventatives/cures that would be safe to eat after treatment, but all chemical meds need to have time to flush out of the system before human consumption.
4) I don't know how dangerous it would be, but I certainly wouldn't. Wouldn't even feed it to my dogs.
5-6) I use a lot of natural preventatives in my rabbitry. I underlined the ones I use the most.
Comfrey for prevention of colds and protein deficiencies.
Blackberry Leaves for the older rabbits.
Plantain, Dandelion, or Leaves/Bark from Elm once or twice a week for general prevention and diarrhea prevention (especially in young rabbits). I've used them daily with a sprinkling of dried oregano leaves with an ill rabbit.
Dried leaves from: Oak, Elm, Sassafras, and Willow are a good for overall health.
Apple Cider Vinegar (daily: 2 tbs/gallon water) is excellent for diarrhea, coccidiosis, doe mojo, and coat condition. Also helps prevent algae from growing in the water containers.

 

[Anniewho6]

I'm so sorry you've been going through this!
1-2) Is up to you - if you want to persevere and try different things to cure them, by all means continue to do so. If you're just fed up and want to start from scratch, you can do that too, just know that you may be facing the same problems with new rabbits.
3) There are some natural preventatives/cures that would be safe to eat after treatment, but all chemical meds need to have time to flush out of the system before human consumption.
4) I don't know how dangerous it would be, but I certainly wouldn't. Wouldn't even feed it to my dogs.
5-6) I use a lot of natural preventatives in my rabbitry. I underlined the ones I use the most.
Comfrey for prevention of colds and protein deficiencies.
Blackberry Leaves for the older rabbits.
Plantain, Dandelion, or Leaves/Bark from Elm once or twice a week for general prevention and diarrhea prevention (especially in young rabbits). I've used them daily with a sprinkling of dried oregano leaves with an ill rabbit.
Dried leaves from: Oak, Elm, Sassafras, and Willow are a good for overall health.
Apple Cider Vinegar (daily: 2 tbs/gallon water) is excellent for diarrhea, coccidiosis, doe mojo, and coat condition. Also helps prevent algae from growing in the water containers.

Thank you very much!
I have found the medication cheaper online which I am very happy! The vet charged me $60.00 just for medication vs same medication (Albon) $14.99 on line.
I'm leaning toward treating all rabbits and working on a new plan for keeping my rabbits healthier.
Great advice Kudos!

 

[secuono]

Same doe can hide cocci and constantly infect her kits. Cull her and the issue will stop or hit her hard and long with drugs, keep cleaning everything she touches and try again. If she still produces sick kits, cull her before your other does end up with the same issue.
I had an AmChin who never stopped infecting every single litter of her's with cocci. Nothing worked, as soon as I culled her, no more got it.

 

[Anniewho6]

Same doe can hide cocci and constantly infect her kits. Cull her and the issue will stop or hit her hard and long with drugs, keep cleaning everything she touches and try again. If she still produces sick kits, cull her before your other does end up with the same issue.
I had an AmChin who never stopped infecting every single litter of her's with cocci. Nothing worked, as soon as I culled her, no more got it.

Thank you very much for sharing your doe's issue with coccidiosis.
I was wondering if it was this doe. However the second large litter shows signs of sickness.

To add to the story: I did have two different does deliver at the same time but they had small litters (1 kit and 3 kits ) and their babies are not showing any signs of sickness. All litters are separate from each other and not mixed up.

Lets get real technical: So before they had their eyes open I took a runt from sick White doe and had her Mother/doe foster it with her 1 kit. Guess what it is not a sick kit. It is still separate from the rest of its siblings. I have to assume it did not chew on its birth mothers poop and that is why it is not sick.

I will consider culling her and maybe the other doe. I only have 4 does. Kinda makes me sad . The two does that produced sick babies are does I raised from babies. The other two does are their mothers I first bought when I started over a year ago.
One question to you: Did you cull all her kits or did you treat them? I still have to determine if I am treating all these babies who are sick. Total: 11 and they all are 2 months old.

I will say everything I have done so far with my rabbits is an interesting learning experience!

 

[secuono]

One batch I treated, took them forever to get anywhere, so they became dog food. Other batch I tried treating everyone twice and waited longer, but in the end, I ate the best and dog food the rest. By the third time, I realized it was only this doe's kits who got sick. Weaned early, gave mom more drugs, some time off, kept cleaning the cage, rebred and again, her kits still got sick, so I turned her into dog food. She was in an all wire cage, no wood, metal feeder, plastic water bottle, floor kept clean, metal nests cleaned regularly.

I agree it's from the kits eating mom's pellets she leaves behind in the nest. There's no way to keep those out, she's bound to leave some.


http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/GI_diseases/Protozoal_diseases/Cocc_en.htm

Corid or Sulmet can be used. It's not expensive. Sulmet is about $8 a bottle. Corid is $16.

 

[Anniewho6]

One batch I treated, took them forever to get anywhere, so they became dog food. Other batch I tried treating everyone twice and waited longer, but in the end, I ate the best and dog food the rest. By the third time, I realized it was only this doe's kits who got sick. Weaned early, gave mom more drugs, some time off, kept cleaning the cage, rebred and again, her kits still got sick, so I turned her into dog food. She was in an all wire cage, no wood, metal feeder, plastic water bottle, floor kept clean, metal nests cleaned regularly.

I agree it's from the kits eating mom's pellets she leaves behind in the nest. There's no way to keep those out, she's bound to leave some.


http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/GI_diseases/Protozoal_diseases/Cocc_en.htm

Corid or Sulmet can be used. It's not expensive. Sulmet is about $8 a bottle. Corid is $16.

It seems you had quite an experience dealing with this issue. I appreciate all the insight in to this subject. Thanks for listing the different medicines available to treat. I went with the medicine the vet had me use. (Albon)