Warblers On A Rabbit

Most of the animals I have saw have been accident prone in some form or another. Sometimes they did something to injure themselves or something else did something to injure them. Whatever the case may be, injuries are almost inevitable amongst animals and most living things in general. One case of when something else inflicts an injury to another animal is in the case of warblers. Several different animals can get warblers including cows, dogs, horses, sheep, goats, squirrels, birds, cats, and even humans, but in the case of this blog, rabbits.

Bot flies are very common around manure and moisture, the typical place you will find most livestock. This is why bot flies create such problems with animals is because they have access to easy hosts. One way warblers are created are when a bot fly lands on the host and deposits an egg. They can also lay the eggs on manure, or on vegetation around animals and be ingested or inhaled and eventually find themselves at the host skin to feed. The egg then matures underneath the skin of the host, and then burrows throughout the host to feed, it creates a hole from the outside to breathe and surfaces so often. If you look at it, it can appear to be just a hole or it can have a large tumor-like appearance. The larger the surface hole, the larger the larvae.

The infection of a bot fly larvae.

If you monitor your animal, you will notice the worm surfacing. The hole will get very watery as the worm pushes fluid out with it. It is recommended that you let a Veterinarian remove the warbler because if it is ripped, it will release toxins that can result in death to the rabbit, or whatever the host may be. If you wait for the larvae to surface, it will be much easier to extract. Make sure you have gloves on, as this is a parasite. Then get a pair of tweezers and a small bottle of saline solution, so you will have somewhere to put the larvae once it is removed. Grab right about halfway down the larvae with the tweezers and clamp on it , but don’t squeeze too hard as that would cause the worm to be split in half resulting in the toxins seeping out. Gently tug against the worm and it should slip out, but sometimes it will take a little bit of wiggling to work the worm out, depending on the size and depth of the larvae. After the removal you should take a syringe and flush the wound with a saline solution to cleanse any debris out, and you should do this everyday for at least a week or until you see improvement in the wound.

After the removal of four larvae.