Hurricane Lane & Wet Bunnies
It's pretty much been raining steady since last Wednesday morning. Which is understandable since there's been a hurricane lurking around out there. It's named "Hurricane Lane" and not to be confused with 'hurricane alley', I suppose? It started as a Category 5 and everyone has been alarmed. It got close to our island and lowered to a Category 4. It moved really slowly and slowed down to a Category 3, then even slower and is now a tropical storm. It did some interesting things when it met up with the winds between our island, Hawaii, and Maui Island. Kinda did a jig jog in it's track, but at the moment, it's just kinda sitting offshore spitting rain everywhere.
We are on the other side of the mountain from the eye of the hurricane so we haven't had much trouble with winds. There has been rather a bit of rain, though. Almost steady heavy rain since last Wednesday morning, a constant drone of rain on the roof with intemittant heavier downpours. Sometimes to the level of 'don't look up or you'll drown' level of downpours.
There's rain and then there's a lot of rain and then there's waterfalls off the roof. It has been to the "waterfall" level of rain now for several days. Finally, today, it's just merely raining, not the pounding make waterfalls type of rain. We also live in a house with a tin roof and in some parts of the house there isn't a ceiling below the roof. Which means it gets a bit loud in some areas. Fortunately, the living room not only has a ceiling (in most of it, we're not done with the living room ceiling project yet) but there's even insulation above the ceiling. How novel is that? Keeps it much quieter and I suppose it keeps heat out on hot days, too. Hawaii houses don't need insulation, but we found some at a yard sale and thought it might be a good thing to put in the ceiling.
Since the eye of the hurricane was on the other side of the island and the hurricane was supposed to stay offshore, we didn't have to cover the sides of the hutch. The rain didn't blow in except for a couple hours on one afternoon. We did have some tin roofing leaning up against the hutch doors when it was doing that. But, it's been raining since Wednesday morning, it's Friday evening and it's still raining. Not sure how many feet of rain we've had in the past several days. I'm sure someone out there is keeping track and we will find out later. Surprisingly enough, there hasn't been a single blip in the power grid and the internet has been steady on as well. Thank you, Hawaiian Electric & Spectrum! Not that we don't have oil lamps and paper and pencil to write letters with should the power and internet disappear, but it's so much more comfortable having them available.
I probably should have gone to the feed store before the rains started. We're down to about three days of bunny pellets left, although we can always feed them foliage and grasses so they aren't going to starve. It's just a lot easier to feed pellets instead of collecting wet grasses. Hopefully the feed store will be open tomorrow.
Phineus does NOT approve of this day after day of rain. He's mostly dry, but quite moist around the edges and he disapproves. He seems to think keeping his feet in his food dish is going to make the weather better. He doesn't normally stand in his feeder, but with the dampness, maybe the feed is keeping his feet drier? Long as he feels better doing it, I'll not fuss at him until the weather is better.
Goldie Fawn and Brother Bunbun, the fawn and lilac brothers, were born in a rainstorm. They spent their first day soaking wet. They'd been born in a newly constructed hutch that was supposed to be lovely and nice. They had a new nest box. Things should have been jolly. But, the new hutch was situated so the wind blew the rain in. It doesn't have the hedge behind it to block the rain. Tootsie had her babies in the nice new nest box, but the rain soaked them. Fortunately, she was in the nest box, too, to try to stay dry so the babies were warm even though they were soaking wet. They were taken out, dried off, the nest box dried, new dry nesting material and the hutch front and sides were covered to keep the rain out. In another day or two, it rained again and the same thing happened. After that, the babies were moved to a different hutch and the new hutch is now only being used as a chicken coop. The chickens go up on their roost out of the rain so it's an okay chicken coop in rainy situations.
It may have been their very early experiences, but Goldie Fawn and his lilac brother, Bunbun, seem to not mind being wet. They almost seem to try to become wet. They were in a nice protected hutch space, up under the middle of the roof with hutch spaces on either side of them. However, when used roofing tin is used to build hutches, there's the occasional nail hole in the roofing panels. So there's ONE drip in the middle of their hutch space. Guess who has to sit under the drip? Goldie and Bunbun got moved down to a lower level where there's no drips. Not sure how they're gonna manage to find a way to get wet, but if there's a way they will find it. A lot of the other bunnies have been moist around the edges, but Goldie managed to get sopping wet. He seemed pretty pleased with himself about it, though. Hopefully he will stay dry now.
The youngest ones are staying dry, which is a good thing. They're getting bigger now and two of them are going to a new home perhaps this weekend. It doesn't look like the rain is going to get heavy again so hopefully the roads will be open so folks can go places again.
Usually Ricky the Rooster has a bigger looking tail, one of the usual rooster tails of glossy greenish black feathers. Well, today, he's not such a pretty rooster today. He also thoroughly disapproves of extensive rainy days. The chickens have been hanging around the back porch and hiding under the bunny hutch.
Earlier today I was chatting with someone about possible colds and sniffles in rabbits. With people, this kind of weather is prone to colds. Just like in people, rabbits can get sniffles, too. Usually, it's called "pasturella' and folks get really alarmed about it.
Since pasturella is caused by "an organism", I'm guessing it's bacterial in nature and not a virus, so that's a good thing. At least, I'd think so. (NOTE! I am NOT a veterinary, so my opinion has no scholarly or medical value.) Still, anti-biotics, such as penicillin, are made to take care of things caused by 'organisms'. We just did that whole round of penicillin treatments for Vent disease earlier this year. I'm thinking that since penicillin is an excellent antibiotic - has it been used to treat pasturella in rabbits? So, back to the internet to see what shows up.
Hmm, how strange. I was looking online for "penicillin treatment of pasturella in rabbits" (rather a leading question and a question of this type wouldn't be approved for cross examination in a court case. It also 'preloads' the possible online hits and may not be the best way to get unbiased information - but! I digress!) and ended up on a medical paper about beta-glucan and pasturella "Alternative treatment of serious and mild Pasteurella multocida infection in New Zealand White rabbits". They had an interesting summary:
"Supra-physiological exposure to P. multocida (in. and im. innoculation) is lethal in rabbits. Physiological exposure (in. only) creates a milder and non-lethal infection. We used Pasteurella isolates with serious virulence-associated genes (ompH, hgbA, pfhA, nanH, ptfA). After supra-physiological exposure, only the enrofloxacin treatment was clinically effective, and even the antibiotic treated group suffered from septicaemia. ß-glucan treatment did not prevent death, although it delayed death considerably compared to controls. ß-glucan was, however, highly effective in protecting against physiological exposure to P. multocida, preventing any histological damage. Our results suggest that ß-glucan feeding should be preventive against clinical Pasteurellosis in rabbits."
Okay, obviously a seriously written article! Even though the article wasn't about using penicillin, it still had some interesting information. Wading through it, it seems there's something we can feed to rabbits to "be preventive against clinical Pasteurellosis in rabbits". Seems like a really great thing, but what exactly is 'beta-glucan'?
So then I Googled "ß-glucan". (I just adore the internet!) Here's a snippet from "Beta Glucan: Health Benefits in Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome" (Not that obesity in the rabbits has been a problem, usually we're trying to get weight on them instead of off of them, but I'm just trying to find out what 'beta-glucan' is so that part doesn't matter. And again, I digress) but here's the snippet:
"Beta glucan (ß-glucan) is a soluble fiber readily available from oat and barley grains that has been gaining interest due to its multiple functional and bioactive properties."
Woot! Oat and Barley grains! We can do Oat and Barley grains, bunnies loooove oatmeal. I've been adding oatmeal to their feed to get weight on them, who knew it would also "be preventive against clinical Pasteurellosis in rabbits"? So, what with all this wet weather, I think they can have extra servings of oatmeal.
I did finally find some info about penicillin and pasturella. I don't have the link right here right now, but it recommended penicillin shots every eight hours. They didn't mention for how many days. It was one of those clinically written type of pages and it was more focussed on some different aspects of research. We were giving weekly penicillin shots, so the earlier round of shots for Vent disease may not have knocked out any pasturella they may have had. Although, several other websites mentioned pasturella microbes were almost always present, it was just that when stressed some animals would then exhibit symptoms and fall prey to the microbes so it sounds like something they may always 'have'. Keeping them unstressed and fed with oatmeal may be better than penicillin? Well, it's just a thought and something to look into perhaps. But again, I'm not a vet and I'm just kicking around the internet so this may or may not be all that helpful to you. Do your own research before doing anything to your own rabbits.