Rabbit upper respiratory infection?

Question

I have a male mini-rex rabbit who is about 3. Over the last couple of days I have noticed that he has been less active and has a white discharge in his nose. I looked it up on the internet and most sites say that it is a sign of an upper respiratory infection. He is not coughing or sneezing that I have seen though. I do not have any good rabbit vets in my area (some vets give harmful antibiotics) and can't really afford to take him to the vet if it is not very serious. He has had "colds" in the winter but has always gotten over them. Does anybody have any experience with this? Do you think he will get over this?

Thanks for any help

Answer 1

It is probably an upper respiratory infection and they will not cure themselves, the rabbit needs to see a vet before it progresses to pneumonia.  If you're worried about the vets in your area, I can point you to a list of bunny-safe antibiotics you can print out and bring with you, l Amoxicillin or any penicillin-based antibiotics are bad and should never be used in a rabbit.  Baytril is the most commonly recommended and prescribed for an unidentified URI, at least by the last several exotics vets I have used, and it is a rabbit-safe drug.  It should not be an extremely expensive vet visit unless the first round of antibiotics does not clear it up.  If that happens, a nasal culture and ID/Sensitivity test would be a wise idea to specifically ID the bacteria and find out what drug will be the most effective in killing it.  Good luck!  

Add: Here's a good article about ID/Sensitivity tests and it also has a section further down on proper antibiotics for rabbits: http://www.bio.miami.edu/hare/culture.ht...  This specific article recommends that test be done right off the bat, but when people are on a budget, most vets will be just fine with prescribing a milder, broad spectrum antibiotic first to try, then following up with the test if that does not cure the problem.