According to guidelines for evaluating probiotics in food reported by a joint UN Food and Agricultural Organization World Health Organization working group, resistance to gastric acidity and bile salts are two of the most widely used in vitro tests based on both survival and growth studies. Furthermore, given serious concerns about increased resistance to antibiotics due to their regular use as additives, one aspect of probiotics that needs to be analyzed is antibiotic resistance. Probiotic strains, as well as bacteria used in food, can harbor resistant genes that can be transferred to pathogenic bacteria ( 8). As a result, probiotic strains intended for meat animals should be screened for antibiotic resistance ( 9). Gently pull your rabbit’s cheeks/lips upward, being VERY careful to keep your fingers away from the front of your rabbit’s face. That’s where his or her very sharp teeth are! For these reasons, we have made our list very easy to read, understand, and find the exact types of medicines noted with what they treat, and the dosage amounts. Furthermore, we have also included important notes with each drug to inform you of what ages can be treated, what becomes toxic, and much more.

Obviously it’s too early to tell whether these new probiotic pellets are actually improving their intestinal flora, but that is what they are intended to do. My wife has recently been reading about the benefits of probiotics for humans, and she’s convinced that a lot of health conditions from irritable bowel syndrome to allergies can improve by taking acidophilus, eating lots of yogurt and generally encouraging the growth of healthy bacteria in the gut. So I am pretty confident our dear bunnies are going to have to make fewer trips to their vet now that we’ve finally figured out a way to get probiotics for rabbits into their little tummies.Probiotics could have a role in rabbit weight gain and in the capacity of the animals to assimilate the nutritional value of the feedstuffs and positively convert them into body mass. Feed conversion ratio (FCR) could be positively affected by probiotic metabolisms that might contribute to a better use of feeds, as also metabolised probiotic cells could be part of the assimilated nutrition. Studies are limited for this supplement and therefore information regarding side effects is also limited. However, probiotics are considered very safe and have few reported side effects. Rarely, probiotics have been reported to cause gas, stomach upset, or stomach discomfort, particularly when first taking the supplement. Also: “ Yogurt or acidophilus are strongly recommended when your rabbit is receiving any type of antibiotic to keep normal gut flora.”

There are other brands of probiotics as well, depending on where in the world you are (Benebac is found more or less world wide from what I understand). An interesting fact is that rabbits can't have their own Vitamin C, so they rely on the fresh vegetables in their diet to provide this for them. So if you are giving your rabbit a commercial mix of food, ensure that it contains lots of good stuff to keep them fit and healthy rather than focusing on keeping costs low. Why The Need For Supplements? Imagine our delight recently when, perusing the array of rabbit food on the shelves of our local Tisol shop, I found a cylinder of American Pet Diet probiotic pellets. They go under the brand name “Critter Be Better” or CBB, and they’re a bit on the pricey side, but after all they are only supposed to be probiotic supplements for rabbits and not something you feel them a lot of every day. Soil samples were collected at a depth of 10 cm under the earth’s surface from Mount Tai, which is located in Tai’an city in the Shandong Province of China. First, 10 g of soil were suspended in 100 mL of sterile water in a conical flask. After incubation at 80°C for 1 h, the culture was diluted and spread on modified agar plates (glucose 5 g, yeast extract 5 g, peptone 5 g, beef paste 5 g, NaCl 5 g, and agar powder 20 g in 1 L of sterilized water with pH 7.0–7.2) and incubated at 37°C for 24–72 h. Suspected colonies were subjected to Gram stain and biochemical tests, including an arabinose biochemical tube test, glucose biochemical tube test, mannitol biochemical tube test, 3% NaCl gelatin biochemical tube test, and MR-VP biochemical tube test. Following those tests, 16S rRNA sequencing was performed with universal primers 27F (5′-AGAGTTTGATCCTGGCTCAG-3′) and 1492R (5′-GGTTACCTTGTTACGACTT-3′), and the sequences were blasted in NCBI.As you seem aware of, antibiotics can wreak havoc with any young mammal’s gastrointestinal microbiota, and the GI microbiota has a big impact on the immune defense and other health-aspects in the individual. The interplay between the various microbes in the gut is complicated and not yet fully understood, but what seems clear is that a highly diverse GI microbiota is really important for good overall health, not just gut health. We do not recommend feeding this product ad libitum or in a separate bowl, to reduce selective eating. In general, probiotic properties are evaluated in vitro by testing their antimicrobial potential, ability to adhere to the host’s intestinal mucin, and resistance to the gastrointestinal environment. Meanwhile, other probiotic properties, expressed in vivo, are more difficult to be evaluated, such as the ability to stimulate the development of the intestinal immune system and the ability to regulate intestinal innate immune and inflammation homeostasis.