This is the story of two of our rabbits that contracted Myxomatosis and what happened to them.

We first got Ronnie and Reggie (two black French lops) from John & Gwen Butler of Bunny Burrows in the early part of last year,
and up until August of last year everything went well.

On Friday 24^th of August we preparing to go on holiday and were getting our rabbits ready to take to the boarding kennels when Sue (my fiancée) Noticed Reggie wasn’t looking too well and said she thought he should go to the vet. So we took him to our local vet where he was diagnosed with myxomatosis, to say we were devastated was to say the least. The vet advised that Reggie should be put to sleep, but we decided we wanted to try and get Reggie through this disease, so we brought him home.

We then cancelled the holiday and set about trying to find out what we could about the disease. After a bit of searching on the Internet we hit upon the Myxomatosis Helpline. This is a superb website run by Robin and Tracy Guppy which tells the story of their bunny Benjamin and his fight against this awful disease. This site contained a lot of useful tips along with a lot of homeopathic remedies to help the rabbit through this difficult time. Some of the most helpful hints were the oil burner (we found eucalyptus the best oil) to help with breathing, Echinacea to help the body’s immune system fight the disease (available in most health shops), plus a little trick of our own where we soaked some cotton wool pads in Olbas oil and fixed them to the bars of the cage with clothes pegs, this was to replace the oil burner when we were not in the house or at night when we were asleep.

The first thing we did was to isolate Reggie from the rest of the rabbits to limit the spread of the disease (although it transpired none of the other rabbits, apart from Ronnie, contracted this disease).

It was about this time we were probably given the worst piece of advice during the whole course of the disease, when we were told that the disease could not be spread from rabbit to rabbit but only by a biting insect such as a mosquito, midge, gnat, flea etc, so based on this information we put Ronnie in with Reggie to keep him company, as they were brothers and had always been together.

We bought some mosquito netting and Sue sewed it to fit snugly around the indoor cage we had put Ronnie and Reggie into, thus preventing them from being bitten by another insect and thereby spreading the disease to our other rabbits. Reggie was placed on some antibiotics to try to prevent any secondary infections; particularly pneumonia from taking hold, for this is what kills most rabbits that get myxomatosis, not usually the disease itself but the secondary infections. Unfortunately after thirteen days Reggie finally succumbed to the disease and we absolutely devastated.

Worse was yet to come Sue had noticed a few days before Reggie died that Ronnie was showing the first clinical signs of the disease, this being a puffiness around the eyes, so as we were taking all our rabbits to the vet to be inoculated against myxomatosis we took Ronnie as well. The vet said not to jump to any conclusions, he might or might not have the disease, and he was inoculated with the rest (I am now left wondering if this made a big difference).

But as days went by it became apparent that Ronnie had also contracted the disease, although it manifested differently in Ronnie than it did in Reggie, where Reggie did not come out in many lumps at all (only blisters in the ears), Ronnie came out in big lumps on his nose, ears and legs, in fact the only things that they had in common were the lumps above the eyes and the sneezing fits that also come with disease.

We then decided to go for specialist help with Ronnie so we took him to see Frances Harcourt Brown the best rabbit vet I know, certainly an acknowledged expert in the field, even so Frances admitted that she had not had much real experience with myxomatosis, but she was willing to give it go. Ronnie was put on an antibiotic to be injected (Depomycin Forte), a painkiller (metacam), a powder to help the breathing (bisolvin) and drops for his nose also to assist his breathing (genticin). Certainly the problem giving most concern was his breathing, and these drugs along with the homeopathic remedies helped considerably. Frances also said that the fact that Ronnie came out in lumps showed he had some immunity from the disease and, while we could not be certain whether the inoculation he had received from my local vet had made a difference, it certainly wouldn’t have done him any harm.

A couple of time during the illness Ronnie stopped eating and we persuaded him to start eating again by syringe feeding him a recovery formula of which there are a couple on the market. We believe that a drop in temperature in the room caused the problem; it is essential to keep the rabbit warm because the virus doesn’t like heat.

As days passed into weeks we began to feel more hopeful and at about 7-8 weeks we knew he was over the worst of it when Frances produced a camera to photograph Ronnie (She has since used these photographs in lectures up and down the country).

The real turning point came at about 9 weeks when the lumps (which by this time had turned into scabs) finally started dropping off. When the scabs dropped off his nose there was a marked improvement in his breathing within the space of a few days.

When we took Ronnie back to Frances she took more photographs and told us we only had to bring Ronnie back if we felt it necessary, the relief was wonderful!!!

Ronnie is now back to his normal mischievous self with only slight signs that anything was ever wrong these being occasional sneezing fits (he never really had them before) and a occasional runny eye.

I would like to say that this has had to be one the most distressing things we have ever come across in all our years of rabbit keeping, there were certainly times when we questioned whether we were being fair to Ronnie, when he was really struggling and we could remember what he used to be like it was really heartbreaking to see, but seeing him running about now it was definitely worth it.

I believe Ronnie owes his life to a number of factors and people and I would like to give credit to them below,

1. First and foremost Frances Harcourt Brown without whose knowledge and encouragement neither we nor Ronnie would have ever got through this and I am convinced without her Ronnie would not have made it.

Below are a number of photographs taken by Frances, which illustrate the clinical signs of myxomatosis and how Ronnie looked during this disease.

2. The Myxomatosis Helpline this website and a number of conversations we had with Robin and Tracy gave us hope that there may be light at the end of the tunnel, also the homeopathic remedies were invaluable.

3. Most of the credit for the nursing of Ronnie and Reggie goes to my fiancée Sue without her constant supervision and administration of medication I doubt Ronnie’s recovery would have happened.

4. Finally credit to Ronnie himself for never giving up and fighting all the way. As Frances said she always thought Ronnie had a chance because he wanted to live.

In conclusion I hope this experience gives all rabbit owners who come across this horrible disease some sort of hope. There is no quick cure for this and will definitely take weeks for a rabbit to recover fully but it can happen as Ronnie has proved.

 

Figure1- Ronnie with lumps on eyes	Figure2- Another shot of Ronnie with lumps on eyes.	Figure 3- Ronnie’s nose with lumps	Figure 4 Ronnie’s nose after lumps had fallen off	Figure 5- Ronnie's eye after lumps had fallen off
Figure 6- Own photo of Ronnie at height of Myxi	Figure 7- Poorly me? Never!! Ronnie Now