Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick, another episode of Vet Chat. Really pleased to have Gwen Bradbury with us today. Gwen's a veterinary surgeon, special interest in rabbits, rabbit behaviour, many facets to that, but obviously just tell us a little bit about, about your journey so far as, as a vet, Gwen.

Sure, thanks, Anthony. So. I graduated in 2011 from Cambridge Vet School.

I did a few years in practise. I did a few years in, as a clinical anaesthetist and a lab animal vet. And during that time, especially the time in practise, I'd recently inherited a rabbit who was very, very grumpy.

And I had a look around to see if I could find information on how I could help this rabbit be happier. And to my surprise, there was very, very little, very little in the scientific literature. And actually, a lot of the books were very anecdotal, and there wasn't much evidence.

And so I thought, oh, well, you know, what can I do to help fix this? So I wrote a, a, a, a paper and I wrote some opinion pieces and journals. And then I got approached by a, publisher who wanted me to write a textbook on the subject, because I've been doing a lot of teleconsulting and I'm face to face consulting on rabbit behavioural problems.

And then now I also work with the Rabbit Welfare Association and fund. I do quite a lot of webinars, and sort of a little bit of serendipity. I've ended up in a position where I've ended up having to learn an awful lot about why pet rabbits behave in the way they do, and what we can do to help them live happier, healthier, longer lives.

And I suppose it's looking also what they do in, in nature and how we've changed that, you know, obviously now more more likely to have indoor rabbits as well. How we can mitigate against some of those changes as we, as we try to domesticate, I suppose. Very much so.

And if we think about just kind of numbers, if we compare them to dogs and cats, so dogs were domesticated, somewhere between 40,000, even potentially up to 100,000 years ago. Cats domesticated 12,000 years ago, and rabbits really about 1000 years. So they haven't actually had relative they haven't had that long to, you know, be domesticated and learn to cope in the ways that we keep them.

And we're starting to realise how some of the things that we've done in very good faith actually contribute to, to both health and behavioural problems. And it's interesting, you know, dogs have been domesticated for a long time and, and we are usually the master of our dog. With a cat, of course, you may say it's been domesticated, but I was adopted by a cat over the.

I think that's the difference, isn't it? You know, I didn't adopt the cats, the cats adopted me. And, and maybe that's where we're up to with rabbits as well, with that very short history of developing those relationships with, with rabbits as well.

Certainly. And, you know, in a way that even sort of, you know, very different from dogs and cats, rabbits don't really have any. Choice.

You know, they're not, they, they, they don't have an in, you know, selective desire to be with us. They haven't got freedom of movement. A rabbit, we take, we put in some form of enclosure, and they are extremely dependent on us, physically, well, not necessarily being very dependent on us mentally and emotionally.

So, it's a little, they're in a, a little bit of a, a funny position. And that's one of the reasons that I'm really, you know, I really care about talking to people about what rabbit, what rabbits want and what rabbits need. And of course rabbits are a a prey animal so I suppose in in some ways even just that, that thing of actually handling them will stress them out to some degree, won't it?

Absolutely, and it's one of the things that I, I, I say to people, if you want to know if an animal likes being picked up and will like being picked up on balance, look to see if it if it has hands. If it doesn't have hands, it doesn't have any. Any knowledge of its own species picking it up with hands.

So things like monkeys, you know, as babies, they are, they are picked up, and it is a way that they are. They experience affection and they experience reassurance. But rabbits are never picked up by another rabbit.

And given that, I think they are the main source of food for 30 different predator species in their native environment, being picked up is a really, really bad thing. Yeah, I, I know, just for people interested in, in knowing more about, rabbit behaviour. Obviously you did a, a full webinar for us as well.

I think it was sponsored by Burgess, so, we will leave that link at the end. I think it's still on the website so that people. I think I've actually done about 4, and I've got another couple this year.

So you can really explore almost any facet that you like of the rabbit behaviour. And I suppose this is also . You know, when we talk about picking up, again, it's really interesting if I, I sold my practise 11 years ago and obviously had a fair number of, of rabbits came into the practise.

And as you say, there really wasn't a lot of behavioural information out there at that time, and one of the ways that we would prevent ourselves from getting scratched, cos I probably had more scratches of rabbits than of cats or dogs, they, they, they can be quite vicious with those claws. But one of the ways that we would do that is obviously stick the rabbit on its back. It would go into a sort of trance type behaviour, and of course we all thought this was great cos you could then go on and do things for the rabbit, but of course again.

This is a petrified state for the rabbit, this is, you know, what can happen in the wild as well, isn't it? Absolutely. And from a, you know, from a pragmatic perspective, as a veterinary surgeon, this, if this is the safest way of accomplishing a task without having to use chemical sedation or restraint, actually, you know, there's a place for it, providing that you're aware that they can flick out and they, they can, they can hurt themselves in doing so.

But it's, it's not a bad way of restraint. But what is a problem is, is if owners think that it's a, it's an appropriate way to interact with their rabbit. It's, yeah, it's a very scared rabbit.

I know, as well as obviously rabbit behaviour, you're, you're particularly interested in rabbit parasites as well, and perhaps how we, we need to treat rabbits, parasites maybe a bit different again from cats and dogs again. You know, when I was at vet school, we used to talk about a cat not being a small dog, and I think it's the same a rabbit isn't a dog or a cat, it is really quite different, isn't it? Maybe talk to me a little bit about what are the parasites that you're most worried about in, in rabbits and, you know, how we perhaps should approach them from a preventative but also from a therapeutic treatment perspective.

Absolutely, well, I think the first thing I would just say about rabbits and parasites is that one of the big differences between cats and dogs and and and rabbits in terms of how we manage parasites is that. Rabbits very rarely go out and meet other rabbits, so actually the, the parasites that we're concerned about are parasites that come in on bedding, for example, or that are transmitted by other pets in the home. So firstly, rabbits don't go out and meet other rabbits typically.

Secondly, rabbits don't in the UK carry zoonotic disease. So again, the kind of argument about parasites and parasite treatment in terms of protecting human health is very different for rabbits. And thirdly, there are a few parasites that cause serious disease, but there are also quite a few parasites that will live, you know, without causing the host any appreciable, you know, problems, certainly on healthy rabbits.

So I guess those are the three things that make rabbits, rabbit parasite management a bit different from cats and dogs. But I think the ones that, you know, the ones that we hear a lot about, the kind of questions that we have are ume caniculi, encephalitazo and caniculi, the neurological parasite that affects rabbit brains and causes rabbit neurological signs. That is a, a very common parasite, but one that occasionally causes disease and it can cause very severe disease that is, is life limiting.

So that is one that we, we talk about quite a bit. There are the things, you know, that like the coccidia that are typically not something that pet owners see, they're much more a problem in kind of breeding establishments where you've got a lot, a lot of spread. But the other ones that we do see in rabbits, we sometimes, we sometimes see fleas, though, again, because of the, the, the not, not roaming and not meeting other rabbits.

Quite uncommon unless the owner's got cats and dogs. Kyla Tella, the kind of walking dandruff, most vets would be quite familiar with that. That is one that does need treating cos it's really, it's really itchy, it's unpleasant.

And also ear mites, so the rabbits, the Serote, serote species and the rabbits, that can cause really unpleasant, ear disease and pain. So those are the ones that I would say are, are the particular ones, that I care about. And the one that I always forget because I don't think of it as a parasite is flies and flies strike.

Obviously, that is, that is also can be a severe problem, but only in certain types of rabbits with certain conditions, so it's, they're not necessarily a threat to all rabbits. I always kind of, when I, again, when I was in practise. And I saw a fly strike.

I always said there's something else wrong. Or animal husbandry is really poor in in that particular case. You know, in my view, people used to think of rabbits as being a great children's pet, you know, that first pet that you had.

I think rabbits need a lot more animal husbandry care than a dog or a cat does, you know, we've had a cat that's just. Adopted us during lockdown and basically an older cat, but he wanders in and out, you know, as long as we feed and water him, that is pretty much all he needs. Occasionally he might come over and say he wants to cuddle, but he may also try and take a nip out of you as well, so, you know, he doesn't actually need a lot of care, whereas, you know, I always said to people with a rabbit, this is something, you know, if it's an outdoor rabbit, you need to be checking that rabbit, you know, a couple of times a day.

You know, so they're not a low maintenance pet, are they? No, not at all. And I think, you know, if we think about parasites, and we think about the, sort of, the, the, the welfare framework, I tend to use the five domains framework rather than the five freedoms because it's a little bit more nuanced.

But if we think about the sort of 4 physics. Domain. We have nutrition, environment, health and behaviour.

And actually, if any of those are wrong, the rabbit is much more susceptible to to parasite infestation. So if it's on an incorrect diet, so the faeces are that are more likely to stick and, you know, are. Are kind of, the, the, the, the gut microbiome is disrupted.

That's a problem. If you've got a rabbit in a very small space on soil ground, that's the problem. If you've got a rabbit with underlying health problems, that's the problem.

So we sort of good parasite management of rabbits has to consider all of the welfare of that rabbit. And if the welfare is good, it. You know, it shouldn't really have parasites.

Just as you said, if there's fly strikes, something else is going on. And so really, in a sense, when you're looking at something, again, you know, go back 11 years when I was in practise, I use quite a lot of cyromazine because sometimes, you know, I would worry about that, you know, that, that animal husbandry that was going on at the bottom of the, the garden where people might go away for 5 days and, you know, it was a, it was a very sunny weather or whatever. And seeing the sense of that, and obviously it's then measuring the danger, isn't it?

This is a young rabbit, he seems very healthy, he's probably gonna cope with it better. An older rabbit that maybe does suffer from a bit of faeces, perhaps does need the cyromazine on, but then of course, You know, you're picking up the rabbit, which is obviously a stressful thing, you know, for rabbits anyway, isn't it? Mm.

So we used to say, you know, every rabbit in the summer should have cyromazine, and you should be checking its bottom at least once every 24 hours, potentially every 12 hours. But actually, what we've realised is that's quite a short-sighted approach because firstly, it means that we're treating a lot of rabbits that we don't need to treat. And secondly, actually just picking up rabbits and looking at their bottom twice a day, you're gonna end up with a rabbit that you can't pick up regardless because it's extremely stressful.

So actually we're saying, right, now we're now saying, OK, so what can we do to make sure we don't need to use, you know, sort of treatment to prevent fly strike. And that can be successful in a lot of cases. If you can improve the husbandry, if you can make sure the rabbit's got plenty of space.

If you can make sure that the owners watch the rabbit moving around, you know, can smell, cause sort of see a trace on a rabbit's backside, they stink. You know, use their senses and keep an eye on the rabbit and check the rabbit's behaviour, then actually, that rabbit is at very low risk of fly strike. But if the owner is keeping the rabbit in, in a, in a way that is, is not good, so it's in a hutch, it's not able to move around, it's, frequently soiled, potentially it's obese or it has arthritis or urinary tract issues, and we've got a rabbit that is frequently soiled.

Then that is a, that certainly is a, a, a risk factor for fly strikes. So then prophylactic treatment can be appropriate then. And similarly, if you've had a rabbit who has had fly strike before, it indicates that something in that rabbit's husbandry is not good.

And especially if you've got damage from previous fly strike, that's another time that prevention is important. And do you think that having you know, because again, I think this is something that has come out more and more as an important thing, you know, rabbits are social creatures. Having a one solitary rabbit, immediately the behaviour and and just the mental status of the rabbit is gonna be poor, isn't it?

Mm. Absolutely. And just the movement, the amount of activity, the amount of movement they do is very different if you have a single rabbit or, or a pet.

And that's very important with parasite management as well, because if they're always sitting in the same place, you've got a lot of pressure on certain areas of skin. You've got a lot of parasite load in a certain area, if you've got parasites at all. And you have a rabbit that is, is, is spending much more time alert and less time doing normal self-care behaviours.

So, for all of these reasons, it's really important to have rabbits, in, in, in pairs or groups. So just going back to eunicula, as such, you wouldn't recommend any sort of preventative treatments, it is basically on clinical signs that you would treat for eunicula. Yeah, one of the challenges with echiiculi is that there are, it's still quite an enigma, so we know that about at least 50% of rabbits are serro positive for, for echiiculi, but without showing clinical signs.

And most of those will never develop clinical signs, so the rationale for treating those is very limited and. There are, we still haven't quite identified what are, you know, why certain rabbits develop signs and why certain rabbits don't. So it makes it really hard to appropriately target, the, to appropriately target the treatment.

And so from a kind of risk benefit standpoint, we as a charity don't, well, the, the Rabbit Welfare Association fund, we don't recommend routine prophylaxis, but if you do have neurological signs, fenbendazole is certainly, is certainly something that you should be, you should be using. And then for the other parasites like Sheoptesuniculae, Cavatiella, they are, and you know when you see clinical signs, cos I think, you know, if you've got Listrohorus, one of the, the fairmites, but the rabbit looks particularly normal. You don't necessarily need to treat for that.

No, and I remember actually as a, as a, with my first rabbit when I was a young teenager, he was a white rabbit, and, you know, in that way that teenagers do, I was, you know, absolutely devoted to this rabbit, and I, you know, I did all sorts of things and I, I, I saw that there were tiny little brown specks moving around him his first. I looked under the microscope, I found they were mites. Took him to the vet and the vet multiple times prescribed a treatment, and actually, in hindsight, it was, there, there was nothing going, there was nothing going wrong with the rabbit, but obviously because I was concerned, the vet, you know, sort of provides a treatment in the way that, you know, potentially we might have done 30 years ago, and now we sort of think twice about.

But actually, you know, you can pull out a, you know, tuft of fur, especially around moulting time on almost any rabbit, and you'll be able to see fur mites. In fact, so much so that my, 3 year old daughter spent a while blowing dandelion clocks and saying fomites. And my, my husband and I were like, what on earth is she talking about?

But Just because we used to pick up clumps of the rabbit's fur and look at it and go, Oh, fur mites. So that's, that's really good. And I suppose for those people who perhaps aren't vets who may have stumbled upon this podcast, we should perhaps categorically say that you should never use firinil on a rabbit, should you?

Absolutely, be very, very careful about, any treatments that you decide to give without the advice of a vet because certain drugs, fipria is a great example, can cause a lot of harm. So it's not something to to do without, without talking to a vet. We, we talk a lot about sustainability on the podcast, it's you know, a passion.

I know it's one of your passions as well. Very much, I think across the board as vets we're beginning to think more and more, you know, let's not overtreat, let's not do harm, both, you know, to the, the animal, but also the environment, also people around as well. So maybe this is again a an example with rabbits.

We will treat, you know, I spent a lot of time as a dermatologist preventatively treating dogs for, for fleas because obviously I knew this particular dog was very allergic to fleas. If it got one or two fleas on it, it would become quite uncomfortable. But obviously, you know, other dogs could survive and other cats could survive very well with a few fleas on them occasionally.

I think it's almost with rabbits, it seems to be we're moving much more towards a treat if necessary rather than preventative, is, would that be fair to say? Yeah, absolutely. And, and quite a lot of the, you know, the owners I talked to are very conscious of the fact that they're, that rabbits are an environmentally friendly pet, you know, in, in, they, they, they have lots of things to recommend them as a sort of sustainable pet choice.

You know, they don't eat meat. They eat stuff that grows very locally, so owners can pick stuff out of their garden to feed them. They don't damage local ecosystems.

They stay in your garden, they don't kill or scare wildlife. You know, there are lots of good reasons. You can compost their waste really easily.

Again, another reason that To avoid antiparasitics if, if, if possible. And they don't cause noise pollution. So we've got lots of reasons why rabbits are really environmentally friendly pets.

And actually, often that is something that owners are quite conscious of. And so people, when, when we're talking about, you know, routine treatment, it's in the news a lot at the moment. We want to make sure that we aren't giving, aren't giving these animals any drugs that are gonna make them in any way less environmentally friendly if they don't need it.

And that's a real, that's a really big point. And of course rabbits are probably the recycler par excellence, cos if you, if you eat your own poo, you can't really do much better than that, can you? Yeah, I mean, absolutely they are, they're extremely efficient.

No, it's really it's really interesting I think that we're starting to have these debates more as well that we are thinking about things because of course, you know, with some of these parasites like eroptes, we may want to use a drug called ivermectin. Again, if we're using that indiscriminately, we know that that can affect dung beetles, and dung beetles are very much unlorded creatures who actually are a very important part of getting rid of all the faeces that is produced by all all the animals all over the world, isn't it? Absolutely, and I don't know whether you know, but the UK's only rolling du dung beetle, so that the beetle that actually pushes balls of, of, of faeces is one that rolls rabbit poop, and that is the minor tour beetle.

And so we, my husband's an entomologist, so actually, over the summer and autumn, we make quite a lot of trips to Thetford Forest, which isn't very far away, to go and spot them. And you get to spot them. They dig holes that are maybe 1 metre deep and, take the.

Sort of female goes down the bottom and she makes little shells to stick the rabbit poos on so she can lay eggs. And then the male rolls the, the, the poo and it falls down a 1 metre hole. There are many helmets that can survive being buried 1 metre underground, but they are the most enchanting little creatures.

So, you know, if we've got things that are doing our parasite management for us, you know, as much as possible, you know, let's, let's let them, let's let them keep on top of the parasites as well. Absolutely and I think we need some photographs of these Minotaur beetles on Instagram or or wherever so we can, we can see them or maybe even a little video, that sounds very entertaining. They are, they've got beautiful horns as you might expect from a miner beetles.

Yeah, it's, it's much better than watching some of the reality TV isn't it on on television. I would say so. Gwen, that'd be really, really interesting.

You know, I think rabbits are poorly understood, as I say, I think they can be seen as a, as a very easy pet to have, but actually, you know, I would, I would discourage people to think it's an easy first pet for a child, because actually it needs a lot of devotion, doesn't it, as, as, as you saw with your microscope and Litraporus all those years ago. Perhaps, perhaps one last little piece of advice on, on, just generally they, as you say, very environmental creature, they, they perhaps don't need as much treatment sometimes as maybe we have done in the past. I think providing that, providing that they have.

They have a, a rabbit companion, so they are, they're, they're living with another rabbit, providing that they've got enough space and they eat mostly hay and grass. Actually, most health problems in rabbits don't really manifest if we're keeping them in a, in a, in a way that is quite close to nature. And that is, is absolutely the same for parasite infestation.

A few very simple rules for good husbandry and rabbits can, you know, it's better than a whole load of, of drug prophylaxis. And I would like to thank you, Gwen for, for the, for the talk today. I particularly also thank your young apprentice for their input as well, which is very good.

So sending my love to her and can you send my best wishes to the entomologists as well. I will indeed, Anthony, lovely to talk to you today. Take care, bye bye.

Bye.