Mama rabbit sneezed!

[Lorelai]

BF and I have been building up our small rabbitry for home meat production, and we recently acquired a New Zealand Black doe with a litter of ten (they are approximately three weeks old) from a family downsizing their stock. We also bought a younger New Zealand Black doe without a litter at the same time. They have been in our garage, isolated from our other rabbits, since we brought them home on Thursday.

Today, we were cleaning out the pans and I noticed the mama rabbit sneeze. Now, I'm pretty new at this, but I've been lurking around this forum for a while and reading a lot of books; from what I understand, sneezing equals BAD. We don't really have the facilities to isolate the mama and her babies, or even the other black doe, without potentially contaminating our other rabbits. Inside the garage is kind of the isolation; the others are outside in a hutch. BF wonders if maybe we just kicked up a lot of hay dust or something that caused mama rabbit to sneeze? Am I overreacting?

We purchased some water soluble vitamins at our local feed store when we first began buying our rabbits, in case they had diarrhea or whatnot in response to their location/feed changes, but I don't know how successfully vitamins can treat colds (or worse, snuffles). It's upsetting, because there are twelve rabbits involved in this, and we are just getting started.

Any advice would be appreciated. I really don't want to lose this doe... she's really sweet and an excellent mama. Worse, I don't want to lose the rest of the rabbits.

I also posted this query on the sister site, BackyardHerds... I'm hoping for a wide and varied response! Thank you all for your input!

 

[Akane]

Sometimes a sneeze is just a sneeze. Pretty much every mammal is capable of sneezing in response to irritants. I would just keep an eye on them for now. One thing I've been learning about snuffles is that if you show or trade rabbits frequently it's not really something you can avoid. You are better off seeing which rabbits are susceptible or not and keeping the ones that remain healthy on their own. In the end it causes a lot less heartache, money, and time.

 

[annageckos]

A sneeze here and there is normally not a problem. Just keep an eye on her. She could have just gotten a piece of dust/fur/hay in her nose.

 

[Boyd]

unless she is sneezing pretty regularly it's just a regular sneeze

If she is sneezing and mucous is dripping down the sides of her nose, time to isolate, give antibiotics and worry about culling because 3 week old nz bunz are not quite weaned yet... if she can last another week or so....