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I can't believe it? My daughter's rabbits have got myxomatosis.
I've never heard of pet rabbits getting it and I thought that it had disappeared in the 'fifties. I remembered hearing about it when I was little and how 95% of the wild rabbit population was wiped out.
Well it hasn't disappeared which shows how much I know! I would have thought there would have been something on the news or in the countless animal care programmes we watch but I've never heard a whisper.
Apparently it's spread by fleas and mosquitoes so pet rabbits need to be vaccinated.
So why didn't the vet mention this? We had rabbits for years when my children were little and it was never mentioned. They're usually pretty quick on the uptake about vaccinations for pets.
The vet said they'd been very unlucky as it's quite rare for pet rabbits with no contact with wild ones to catch it. My daughter keeps an eye on them all the time so she knew immediately that one of them wasn't well, the second one had no symptoms but will obviously be infected.
It's still in the very early stages so the vet is treating the secondary infections as the virus itself isn't the killer. She said she doesn't normally see them with so few symptoms so it was worth trying to save them. However she said they could just decline quickly and they need to be watched a lot.
Just hope they are OK.
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The vet said they'd been very unlucky as it's quite rare for pet rabbits with no contact with wild ones to catch it. My daughter keeps an eye on them all the time so she knew immediately that one of them wasn't well, the second one had no symptoms but will obviously be infected.
It's still in the very early stages so the vet is treating the secondary infections as the virus itself isn't the killer. She said she doesn't normally see them with so few symptoms so it was worth trying to save them. However she said they could just decline quickly and they need to be watched a lot.
Just hope they are OK.
Post 110