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Care Observations

A care observation is a dated welfare check on one rabbit, recorded as scores rather than free text: appetite, water intake, droppings, behavior, and body condition. Because the values are structured, a fortnight of them is comparable in a way that a fortnight of notes is not — which is how a drop in condition shows up before it becomes an illness.

What a care observation is

Each observation covers one rabbit on one date:

FieldValues
AppetiteExcellent · Good · Reduced · Poor · None
Water intakeNormal · Increased · Decreased · Not drinking
DroppingsNormal · Soft · Excess cecotropes · GI stasis risk · Diarrhea · None
BehaviorActive · Calm · Lethargic · Stressed · Aggressive · Hiding
Body condition1 to 5
Nail trim dueYes or no
Grooming notesFree text
General notesFree text

Every field is optional except the rabbit itself, so a check where you only noted the droppings is still worth recording.

The droppings scale is the one to read carefully: GI stasis risk and none are the values that mean "act now", and they are separated from soft deliberately.

Record one

Observations attach to a rabbit, never to a litter.

Add one from the Health section of a rabbit's record.

Observations versus health events

Both exist because they answer different questions.

Care observationHealth event
ShapeScored fieldsA titled note
ScopeOne rabbitA rabbit or a litter
Typical useThe routine checkSomething happened
Good forTrends over timeThe record of an incident

Use an observation for the walk-round: everything looks fine, appetite good, condition 3. Use an event for the vet visit, the injury, the illness, the necropsy — anything you would want to find again by name.

They are complementary. A run of observations showing appetite sliding from good to poor is exactly the context you want attached to the illness event that follows it.

Where they appear

Observations show on the rabbit's own record, and they feed the health analytics — which report how many observations you made, how many rabbits were actually checked, your herd's average body condition score, how many rabbits are due a nail trim, and a count of concern flags, meaning observations where appetite was recorded as poor or none.

That last one is the useful one: it turns "did anything look off this month" into a number you can look at without reading every note.