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🩺 Your free vet-prep sheet

Your Rabbit Vet-Prep Sheet

Exotic-mammal vets are rare, and it is easy to freeze in a crisis. This is the one page to have ready — how to find a vet, what to bring, what to tell them, and the questions to ask. Print it and keep it with your care notes. This helps you prepare for a vet — it is not treatment.

Black & white saves ink and prints cleanly on any printer.

Not sure it’s a vet trip yet? Run the “normal, or should I worry?” check first — many worries turn out to be a husbandry fix.

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Rabbit — Vet-Prep Sheet

🔍 Find an exotic-mammal vet — before you need one

  • Search the AEMV find-a-vet directory (the Association of Exotic Mammal Veterinarians), or, in the UK, the RCVS Find-a-Vet tool — or search “exotic / small-mammal vet near me”.
  • Call ahead and ask the key question: “Do you see small / exotic mammals?” Not every vet does. Ask the exam fee while you’re on the phone, so the cost is one less panic in a crisis.
  • Find and save one now, while things are calm — not in the middle of an emergency.

📇 Fill this in now — before the crisis

Two minutes now saves ten in a panic. Print it and keep it with your care notes.

My vet
My rabbit
What I’m seeing

🚨 Is this an emergency now?

See a vet promptly if you notice any of these:

  • Not eating, OR no droppings, for more than about 12 hours — this is gut stasis, a genuine emergency; see a vet the same day
  • Sitting hunched, grinding teeth, or a sudden loss of energy — signs of pain rabbits try to hide
  • Drooling, or difficulty eating (often dental disease)
  • Runny nose or eyes, or trouble breathing
  • Diarrhoea, or soft sticky droppings around the bottom (flystrike risk in warm weather)
  • Dark red urine, fur loss, or red, swollen skin
  • Not hopping or moving normally
  • Body temperature below 38°C (100.4°F) or above 40.6°C (105°F)

When in doubt, a vet call is never wrong — most issues are reversible if caught early.

🚗 On the way / while you wait

✅ Do

  • Keep it warm — small mammals chill and dehydrate fast, and cold makes almost everything worse.
  • Bring it in its own bedding/carrier with some familiar food.
  • For rabbits and guinea pigs, keep offering their normal hay, greens and water — a gut that stops is an emergency.
  • Bring a fresh dropping or urine sample if you can.
  • Keep it calm and quiet.

⛔ Don’t

  • Don’t give any human or OTC medicines — some common antibiotics are fatal to rabbits and guinea pigs.
  • Don’t withhold food from a rabbit or guinea pig.
  • Don’t let it get cold.
  • Don’t handle it more than necessary.

🎒 What to bring

  • A fresh dropping or urine sample, if you can collect one.
  • Photos and a short video of the behaviour or symptom — it may not show it in the clinic.
  • A note of your setup and exactly what — and how often — you feed.
  • A note of eating, drinking and toileting over the last day.
  • The animal in a secure, warm carrier.

🗣️ What to tell the vet

A general vet may not know this species. Come ready to explain its correct care:

Enclosure
For two medium rabbits, a living space no smaller than 3m × 2m × 1m high (about 10 × 6 × 3 ft), combining a secure shelter with an attached exercise area they can use whenever they like. They must be able to hop several times, stand fully upright on their back legs without their ears touching the roof, and stretch out flat. A traditional small hutch is not enough. Housing must be draught-free, dry, well-ventilated and predator-proof, with the shelter raised off the ground.
Companionship
Rabbits are social and should live with at least one other friendly, compatible rabbit — a neutered male paired with a neutered female is the classic bond, because neutering reduces fighting in both sexes. Give bonded rabbits both space to be together and space to get away from each other (as many hiding spots as rabbits, plus one). A rabbit that truly must live alone needs daily human interaction as a poor substitute for its own kind.
Temperature
Comfortable in normal room or outdoor temperatures, but must be protected from damp, draughts and extremes of heat and cold — add shade over part of any run in warm, sunny weather. (A healthy rabbit’s own body temperature runs 39.4–40°C / 103–104°F; a reading below 38°C or above 40.6°C is a warning sign of illness — see a vet.)
Substrate
Warm, safe-to-eat bedding — dust-free straw or hay — over an absorbent layer such as newspaper or dust-free, non-cedar wood shavings. Provide a separate litter area (they can be litter-trained) using newspaper, hay/straw, shredded paper or paper-based non-clumping, non-expanding litter, kept apart from the sleeping area. Never use a wire floor — it hurts their feet. Spot-clean toilet areas daily and clean the whole enclosure about weekly.
Enrichment
Rabbits are intelligent and active, and get bored easily. Give daily exercise plus things to do: a platform to climb, a sand/soil dig box, cardboard boxes and tunnels, safe objects to chew, and food hidden or scattered to forage (try hay in a rack or stuffed in cardboard tubes). They’re most active at dawn, dusk and overnight, so make sure they can reach their exercise space then.
Diet
About 85% good-quality hay and/or fresh grass — a bundle at least as big as the rabbit, available at all times, as it keeps both the gut moving and the continuously-growing teeth worn down. Add around 10% washed leafy greens and herbs daily (a large handful, ideally 5–6 different types such as kale, parsley, mint, dandelion), and only about 5% pellets — a small, measured daily amount, never topped up. Fruit and root veg (carrot, apple) are occasional treats only. Always provide fresh water. Never feed muesli-style mixes (they cause dental and gut disease), and never feed lawnmower clippings. Change any diet gradually over weeks — sudden changes cause dangerous gut upset.
Supplements
None needed on a correct hay-based diet: hay does the real work of wearing teeth down and keeping the gut moving, and rabbits make their own B-vitamins by re-eating their soft caecotroph droppings. Do not add vitamin/mineral supplements unless a vet advises it.

⚕️ Small mammals are prey animals and hide illness until it is advanced, so any change in eating, droppings, drinking or behaviour is urgent — in rabbits and guinea pigs, not eating or passing no droppings for 12–24 hours can be a life-threatening emergency (gut stasis). They also chill and dehydrate quickly, so keep it warm. Tell the vet about your diet and any remedies you’ve used, and ask for exotic-mammal-safe medicines and doses — several antibiotics that are routine in other pets are dangerous to rabbits and guinea pigs.

⚕️ Gut stasis is a genuine emergency — a rabbit that stops eating or stops passing droppings for 12–24 hours needs a vet urgently. Several antibiotics that are routine in cats and dogs (oral penicillin-type / most oral antibiotics) can be fatal to rabbits, so ask specifically for rabbit-safe medicines.

Then note which of the warning signs (above) you are seeing, when they started, and whether they are getting worse.

❓ Questions to ask

  • Do you routinely see small / exotic mammals? If not, can you refer me to a vet who does?
  • What are the likely causes — and could my setup or diet be contributing?
  • What is the treatment plan, the likely cost, and what should I watch for at home?
  • How do I prevent this from happening again?