Rabbits are hindgut fermenters, yes—but they are not the same as horses, rhinos, or elephants in how they process that fermentation. Rabbits use cecotrophy. They produce nutrient-dense soft feces (cecotropes), then re-ingest them to run the digestion process a second time. That allows them to extract nutrients efficiently without needing continuous intake of large volumes of forage. Horses, rhinos, and elephants do not do this. They rely on volume throughput—they have to keep eating constantly because they only get one pass at digestion. Rabbits don’t. They operate on a crepuscular feeding pattern—they primarily eat at dawn and dusk, then spend long periods resting while fermentation occurs in the cecum. During that time, they’re not “needing constant forage,” they’re actively digesting what they already consumed and then recycling it through cecotrophy. So no, rabbits are not “the same” as other hindgut fermenters in feeding behavior or nutritional strategy. They’re a high-efficiency recycler system, not a continuous grazing system.

This is one of those posts people don’t like to write, but they need to be written anyway. Viki aborted at day 26. By the time I got to her, I already knew what I was walking into. The kits had been dead for days—likely around day 21–23—and she was now stuck trying to pass them. Water had already broken, and she was covered in that rank, sour smell that tells you things have gone wrong long before you got there. At that point, you don’t stand there hoping it fixes itself. You get to work. I cleaned her up first—chlorhexidine around the vulva just to get ahead of the contamination as much as possible—then gloved up and started checking. Palpation, checking the canal, making sure nothing was lodged. You have to know what’s in there before you start pushing anything. If something’s stuck and you force contractions, you’ll tear her up. She was already sitting in infection risk, so I gave Penicillin G. This is why we keep a relationship with a vet and keep meds on hand—because there’s no time to go hunting for it when you’re standing in the middle of something like this. Once I knew nothing was blocking, I used oxytocin to help her clear. Tiny dose. Wait. Watch. Recheck. She needed a second round before everything finally started moving the way it should. While all of this was going on, I was trying to keep her steady. I mixed up a slurry—crushed Tums, sugar, probiotics, and added a little plain yogurt to make it something she’d actually take. I syringed about 6 cc into her cheek pocket first, just to make sure something got into her, then offered the rest in an eggshell. She took to the shell on her own—chewing, licking at it, getting a little more calcium in her system without me having to force it. Sometimes that’s the difference. Getting them to participate instead of just fighting them. Because when they’re under that kind of strain, they can crash fast. If calcium drops, contractions weaken. If contractions weaken, nothing clears. And then you’re in real trouble.