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Due to dietary, bacterial, or physical issues, the bladder can develop certain health problems that will most probably need veterinarian intervention.
Most of these issues can be discovered with close monitorisation of the urine and your rabbit’s behaviour.
There are many types of urine rabbits can excrete.
Normal urine ranges from yellow to red.
Red urine may happen due to different causes, like diet or level of hydration, none of which are worrisome.
Urine can also take a white appearance as they are getting rid of calcium, but it is worrisome if white urine is a common occurrence.
Brown urine means that the rabbit is dehydrated.
Cloudy urine can occur if your rabbit has an infection or urolithiasis, which is worrisome. This is also called sludge.
Red spots in seemingly normal urine are of important matter as it may mean that there is blood in the urine.
Bladder issues your rabbit may come across are due to infections or calcium excess, that can occur due to arthritis or other mobility problem amongst other issues.
Sometimes, when rabbits become paralysed, expression of the bladder may be necessary. This includes pressing the bladder in a certain way so the rabbit urinates.
To learn more about rabbit urine and their bladder health, you can check these pages:
Rabbit Welfare Association and Fund’s information sheet about rabbit bladder problems.
The Bunny Lady’s extensive rabbit urine guide.
Bishops Stortford Veterinary Hospital’s factsheet about red urine.
Kidney stones in rabbits occur similarly with humans: ingested material gets filtered by the kidneys and minerals are left within creating clumps that grow in size with time.
Depending on the size it may create different issues.
Normally issues with urine and the kidneys occur due to high calcium intake, but there are other things that can cause hypercalcaemia, like diet, dehydration, kidney or bladder diseases, or even genetical components.
When the particles are very small it creates a sludge that can be recognised by its similarity to wet sand.
It is also common for rabbits to be dehydrated when presenting sludge.
Sludge can develop cystitis (an inflammation of the bladder) and can ultimately aggravate the situation and turn into urolithiasis.
You can recognise kidney stones and harmed tissue if there are spots of blood in the urine.
They are differentiated from normal red urine because blood will barely mix with the urine, thus it creates small dots and pools, whilst red urine is fully red-orange coloured.
Diagnosis can be done by gathering of the urine, and/or radiographs that show the clumps within the body.
Treatment depends based on what type of issue the rabbit has.
Stabilisation will be achieved with analgesics, rapid rehydration (intravenous and intra-osseous), prokinetics and syringe feed, but in certain situations surgical removal of calculi and urolites will be necessary.
The Rabbit Welfare Association and Fund provides the experience that many rabbits have complications, whilst many others survive but require life-long care.
There are still many more things to learn about Urolithiasis and urine sludge not mentioned here.
If you want to learn more, you can visit:
Lake Howell Animal Clinic’s Kidney or Bladder Stones information page.
The Rabbit Welfare Association and Fund’s page on Urolithiasis.
The House Rabbit Society’s Bladder Stones and Bladder Sludge information sheet.
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