Altivo

Kidney failure is a frequent diagnosis in elderly rabbits, yes. Buster was probably somewhat dehydrated for quite a while. I observed last year that his water intake was lower than I thought it should be, but he seemed in no distress at the time, so I just kept watching. My rabbit experience in the past was mostly with larger breeds, so I wasn't sure whether this was a real issue or not.

However, when I looked up torticollis to make sure I remembered it correctly for my response to corelog it suddenly clicked that Buster had virtually all the symptoms except for the actual wry neck. He began to manifest some stiffness or possible paralysis in the rear legs when the weather got cold this winter, and I put that down to age and arthritic symptoms too. Now I see in this new theory on wry neck syndrome, that the Encephalitazoon cuniculi parasite is commonly found in the rabbit kidney, and attacks there when the immune system becomes weak. One typical progression is for it to reach the brain and produce the neurological symptom pattern of wry neck. It seems an odd connection, but nature is odd sometimes.