Nancy and the Abcess

So I had a beautiful Doe called Nancy...

She had already had 2 stunning litters and had just given birth to the 3rd. She and the babies were all doing great. Then the babies had got to about 5 weeks old and I noticed Nancy didn't seem herself. She wouldn't let the babies anywhere near her and I was getting worried about them getting hurt from her jumping around. So I decided as they were all clearly weaned already to put the babies into a separate cage. I checked her over and she seemed fine. Now she might calm down a bit, I thought. Then a few days went by and she was eating and drinking fine but didn't seem to want to move around much. I thought I'll check her over again... OMG... no... not a lump... really? What is it?

The lump was in a difficult place so I bought Nancy inside and put her upside down on my lap. The lump was in her groin so I called the vet and explained what I could see. They said it sounded like an abcess. However they said it would cost ridiculous amounts (in their words) for a rabbit (😡😤) to remove it. But if I wanted them to take a look I could. So there's a part of the skin that looked green and as if that was where the infection had started so I used a sterilisation and numbing kit to clean and numb the area and then steralised the scalpel. I cut a tiny incision onto of the original wound area it looked like a baby had bit her just to the side of her nipple. I then wiped away the blood with a wet wipe to find creamy coloured puss behind the skin. I sent the photos to the vet and they gave me some antibiotics and told me to keep picking away at the puss.

Over the next week twice a day I would bring Nancy in and clean the area and use tweezers to pick away at the creamy puss, then once she had had enough I would use a calpol syringe to push very watered down tcp into the what was now becoming a hole in my baby's groin. Finally I would apply sudocrem and cover with a pet friendly bandage. I'm not going to lie to you... it made me feel sick! But at the end of the day no one else was going to do it and if I didn't get it out she would die from the infection! I don't think so!! Not my bunny!!

Another 3/4 days went by when all of a sudden the last bit of the bag of puss was feeling loose and was trying to come through the hole. I used the watered down tcp and flushed the hole as I pulled it with the tweezers and out it came! Finally!! I got her another course of oral antibiotics and I kept the hole open for 1 more day flushing the hole to clear up any little bit of infection that could still be there. After this day I started flushing with tcp and applying sudocrem but not covering it to help it heal faster. It healed over withing 2 days and Nancy was absolutely fine! She was then sold on as a pet and is still happy in her new home 😃🐰🐇