author(s)
Kalakotla Vishwas, Kanakuntla Sandhyarani, Doppalapudi Madhuri, Mylaram Jeevanalatha and Kancharlapalli Dhanalakshmi

abstract
In the present study, tissue samples from rabbit carcasses collected from organized farms located in and around Hyderabad apart from the animals necropsied in the Department of Veterinary Pathology, PVNRTVU, College of Veterinary Science, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad. A total of 150 rabbit carcasses of either sex and of different age groups died during January to July 2018 were subjected to detailed postmortem examination for pathological and bacteriological study. System wise causes of mortality was summerized in which mortality due to involvement of digestive system is 34.99%. In digestive system, gastric ulcer was observed in one (2.85%) case, enteritis was noticed in 8 (22.85%) cases. Hepato pathology was found to be very common and was recorded in 26 (74.3%) out of 35 carcasses among 150 carcasses examined. Various hepato-pathological conditions such as degenerative changes (17.14%) like fatty change (8.57%) and necrosis (8.57%), acute hepatitis (24.28%), chronic hepatitis (17.71%), cholangio hepatitis (11.53%) and hepatic tumor (7.70%) were recorded. Combined lesions of both respiratory and digestive systems are seen in 17 carcasses (11.33%) in which pneumo enteritis (41.17%) and pneumo hepatitis (58.82%) were noticed. A total of 45 samples from lungs and intestines were examined for bacterial isolation and the pathogens isolated were Staphylococcus spp. (33.33%), E. coli (24.43%), Pasturella spp. (8.9%) and Salmonella (11.11%), Klebsiella (6.7%) pseudomonas (2.22%) respectively. ABST revealed that most of the bacterial strains were sensitive to gentamycin and enrofloxacin.