If you have been following this journal for a while, you’d know that Buttons has digestive issues and I am always trying to figure out what to do about it. I have spent months limiting foods, testing how much he can eat of certain things, and what causes it. Sometimes it’s obvious, like the tiniest piece of apple, and other times it isn’t, like wattle.

Yep, wattle. August is when the wattle trees bloom in masses of yellow fluffy balls, and by the end of September/start of October, the flowers drop and leave dried yellow confetti that covers the ground in fine layers. It is impossible to rake it all up, because more appears magically.

That just means that the grass has wattle flavouring, and of course Buttons loves strong flavours. He goes around and vacuums up the wattle balls. I didn’t realise he was doing that, until he had poopy bum again.

I went to rinse his bum off in the laundry sink (I use what I call a bum-cloth, with is an old towel cut up into pieces) I wet the cloth and wipe his bum. I’m aware that bunnies can get UTIs if their bum is in too much water, that’s why I use a cloth.

Anyway, he is used to it. He sits on a towel on the washing machine and knows what’s going to happen. I pick him up in a rugby hold, but his head and shoulders are facing my back and are between my side and my arm, and with the other hand I clean him up. He has learned to put his back feet on my left hand so I can lift his rear end up. I use the wet cloth and rinse with with warm water.

This time, he surprised me with whole wattle balls appearing on the cloth.

I’ve known that to settle an upset bunny-tummy, you give them mint. But, of course my mint plant is pathetically useless and looks like a bunch of sticks. So I had to come up with another idea…

Poopy-Bum

I was talking to a vet nurse who mentioned that poopy-bum is excessive caecotrophs, caused by too many minerals in the diet. That made sense because poopy-bum does smell like amino acids, which is what rabbits smell prior to the caecotroph’s arrival and that’s what gets them to eat it.

I had to figure out what was causing excessive mineral intake, and why he gets this from everything he eats. All I could put it down to is an imbalance in his gut, because he simply eats what a rabbit should eat. Grass, good quality pellets, no veggies, a teensy bit of banana in the morning and two treats.

So, thinking about it in human terms, when we get diarrhoea our bodies get low on electrolytes (salts), and it’s recommended that we have some electrolyte-based liquids to boost our system again.

Now, the issue with rabbits is, they cannot have too much salt in their diet. It can kill them. But Buttons clearly has an imbalance and maybe he needs it.

I asked the vet nurse about it, and of course she said emphatically never give your rabbit electrolytes, they don’t need it. Did I listen? No, of course not.

So, one night I set up two water bowls, one with about a teaspoon of horse salts (because it has animal safe iodine in it) dissolved in fresh water, and the other water bowl with normal fresh water.

Both bunnies sniffed both bowls, they could tell the difference between them, their ability to smell is far more advanced to ours.

I watched them to see what they would do. After a while Nova had a big drink of the salty water. Then about 15 minutes later a big drink of the fresh water. Buttons did the same thing.

I left both bowls overnight in the pen. The level didn’t go down further by morning. That meant they didn’t drink more of the salty water, but the fresh water was down to its normal morning level.

The next morning Buttons’ poopy-bum cleared up and he hasn’t had it again for about a week.

I only gave them the salty-water once, and it was their choice to drink it.

Usually, too much salt in your diet causes tummy upsets and excessive amounts cause diarrhoea, which is the total opposite of what you’d think would happen, seeing that salt dries things out and it is used for preserving.

Salt in a rabbit’s diet

There is new evidence (in 2023) to suggest that there is not enough salt in rabbit’s diets. Rabbit dietitians are now studying the effects of low salt in rabbit’s diets, and are finding that rabbits can have behavioural issues, learning issues and they are unable to get and store the right amount of vitamins and minerals from their food. With the addition of salt in their diets, a lot of the issues repair and the rabbits are overall happier, healthier and are able to digest their food properly.

Never give your rabbit a salt block. They can’t lick it, so they will bite it and we all know what salt is like when you bite it… Salt blocks do not support their diet at all.