Unknown findings in a Californian doe.

[WannaBeFarmR]

So while dressing one of the rabbits I came across something I've never seen in any of our rabbits before. My concern is it could be a disease of some sort. Five rabbits were done 4 females from the same pen/litter and one male same litter different pen. All rabbits looked alert, had smooth healthy coats, always ate well, and if anything were a little on the fat side actually. The male dressed out fine and all three females looked perfect as well, but one female was abnormal and was not saved for the freezer or anything else. There was a offensive smell about this rabbit after opening it, the liver was very dark no spotting just dark almost black in color, and there was a tissue mass inside almost fetus like. She was not bred the only male she was near was her brother and he was removed at 6 weeks. She shared a pen with her sisters but they were 100% female and had no abnormalities, she was never next to a buck or out of her cage (which is an all wire hanging cage about 5 feet off the ground). I have no idea what this is I'm hoping it was a fluke tumor or structural deformity and not something that's going to take out all my rabbits. My set up is really clean, cages and dishes are sanitized on schedule, no filthy conditions here. Does anyone know if this sounds like a disease and if it is what do I do now?

 

[Roving Jacobs]

A fetus-like mass sounds like a teratoma to me, which is just a tumor that starts growing body tissues like bones and teeth and hair and things. It could also be a sibling that she absorbed in utero, like a conjoined twin, that was putting extra strain on her liver. I've never heard of anything contagious that causes masses like that. Do you have a picture of the tumor?

 

[WannaBeFarmR]

I wasn't aware of any diseases that can be spread that caused masses either but I'm not in the know about these kinds of things. I don't have any pics but I didn't see anything that looked like teeth or eyes I didn't open the mass up so I don't know if it had bones or guts or anything. Its been really cold here so I was in a hurry to finish and didn't want to contaminate the healthy looking rabbits I was doing either. It just had that shape to it, I had a rabbit deliver a really big fetus once no way it would have lived looking the way it did but it had that same shape to it. I'll have to google teratoma.