some of you may remember last year i had a bunny dora who passed away before then she had flystrike and i missed the eggs when washing her she was the only one of my rabbits i didnt rear gaurd as i was bathing her 3 times a day and thought i would catch it first before maggots and because of her seizures and ec didnt want to give her extra medication by rear gaurding her, i didnt get there before the maggots but luckily i did catch it early and she survived.
i normally rear gaurd on the 1st of june as its normally the start of the hot season, however this year we have had a hot spell this week while iv been on holiday and my bunnies in boarding with freinds. upon coco coming home (coco is my 10.5yr old bunny who mostly lives with sdf76 my mum and his wife bun kitty) and going into the garden he seemed fine and healthy and no major concerns with him he had a caceotroph stuck to him but mum cleaned him off n put him back into the garden, she stroked him that evening and found a slightly hard lump when she moved the fur she found lots of little eggs, fly eggs unhatched. she immediatly got them off,
here is the email account she showed me as she doesnt come onto ru these days:
ere's the pic of the 1 egg (I assume dead and unhatched because of the rearguard ) I found today. It seems the only photos you get of flystrike are when it is horrendous with maggots and wounds. I certainly know from personal experience that there's no time for photographs when you find eggs!!! You have to act very swiftly.
I pulled the eggs off as fast as I could by hand as I was worried that in the time taken to get to the vets one egg might hatch, (Then with Dad on phone to vet) I washed Coco's bottom half in the sink using a squirt of squeezy liquid dissolved in the water, then rinsed Coco off with plain water, as instructed. The vet said rabbit shampoo or baby shampoo would be best but we had none. ( I could have gone to Tesco to get some but she said speed was of the essence and to use washing up liquid).
Then we sat him on a towel and searched for more. When I was confident I had got them all I quickly checked his partner Kitty but she was fine. When we got to the emergancy vets I said I was sure I had got them all, but on examination she found another clump much to my surprise and we set about both removing the eggs with our hands and checked and checked him before applying the rearguard. The best way I can describe the eggs is like oval nit eggs but some bigger and I bagged some up that I had picked off onto a piece of paper to make sure of correct diagnosis.
However when I got there I thought I had squashed some of them them and she said no thats definitely flystrike- the eggs start off small then grow and change. "They can look like sawdust" were her words but I would say more like little woodchip bits as some had flattened and had a jagged edge. She said if I had waited another 6 hours till morning there would have been maggots as they can go from egg to maggot in 12 hours. She said "They look like grains of rice" but from what I saw they start off smaller first - more like nits.
I thought I would show you and you can show on RU if you want- its not a very clear pic though... as I said the egg is near the 2 and a half inch mark on the tape measure and is about one sixteenth of an inch long slightly oval shape. It's the tiny little white dot. It was half way up his back more to the side.
love mum x
i wanted to share this account and will add the picture in a min, as even a clean well looked after bunny can get it, coco is now fine and no eggs hatched, he has been rear gaurded and we are monitoring him closely. needless to say im very glad my mum caught it early enough and wish id rear gaurded him before i went away but i didnt know it would go from torrential rains to sudden heat. still we learn by our mistakes.
i thought it was important for RU people to know what a fly egg looked like and to know they change shape and can look like wood chips of flaked skin at some stages, i didnt know they changed shape at all!
i normally rear gaurd on the 1st of june as its normally the start of the hot season, however this year we have had a hot spell this week while iv been on holiday and my bunnies in boarding with freinds. upon coco coming home (coco is my 10.5yr old bunny who mostly lives with sdf76 my mum and his wife bun kitty) and going into the garden he seemed fine and healthy and no major concerns with him he had a caceotroph stuck to him but mum cleaned him off n put him back into the garden, she stroked him that evening and found a slightly hard lump when she moved the fur she found lots of little eggs, fly eggs unhatched. she immediatly got them off,
here is the email account she showed me as she doesnt come onto ru these days:
ere's the pic of the 1 egg (I assume dead and unhatched because of the rearguard ) I found today. It seems the only photos you get of flystrike are when it is horrendous with maggots and wounds. I certainly know from personal experience that there's no time for photographs when you find eggs!!! You have to act very swiftly.
I pulled the eggs off as fast as I could by hand as I was worried that in the time taken to get to the vets one egg might hatch, (Then with Dad on phone to vet) I washed Coco's bottom half in the sink using a squirt of squeezy liquid dissolved in the water, then rinsed Coco off with plain water, as instructed. The vet said rabbit shampoo or baby shampoo would be best but we had none. ( I could have gone to Tesco to get some but she said speed was of the essence and to use washing up liquid).
Then we sat him on a towel and searched for more. When I was confident I had got them all I quickly checked his partner Kitty but she was fine. When we got to the emergancy vets I said I was sure I had got them all, but on examination she found another clump much to my surprise and we set about both removing the eggs with our hands and checked and checked him before applying the rearguard. The best way I can describe the eggs is like oval nit eggs but some bigger and I bagged some up that I had picked off onto a piece of paper to make sure of correct diagnosis.
However when I got there I thought I had squashed some of them them and she said no thats definitely flystrike- the eggs start off small then grow and change. "They can look like sawdust" were her words but I would say more like little woodchip bits as some had flattened and had a jagged edge. She said if I had waited another 6 hours till morning there would have been maggots as they can go from egg to maggot in 12 hours. She said "They look like grains of rice" but from what I saw they start off smaller first - more like nits.
I thought I would show you and you can show on RU if you want- its not a very clear pic though... as I said the egg is near the 2 and a half inch mark on the tape measure and is about one sixteenth of an inch long slightly oval shape. It's the tiny little white dot. It was half way up his back more to the side.
love mum x
i wanted to share this account and will add the picture in a min, as even a clean well looked after bunny can get it, coco is now fine and no eggs hatched, he has been rear gaurded and we are monitoring him closely. needless to say im very glad my mum caught it early enough and wish id rear gaurded him before i went away but i didnt know it would go from torrential rains to sudden heat. still we learn by our mistakes.
i thought it was important for RU people to know what a fly egg looked like and to know they change shape and can look like wood chips of flaked skin at some stages, i didnt know they changed shape at all!
:thumb: