Bunny Health
Honey rediscovered as a wound
treatment.
A few years ago before I got into showing rabbits, I brought my
pet fuzzy lop into the vet clinic. It was my first experience
clipping a mat and as careful as I was being I still clipped the
skin on my buck. The vet had a look at it and prescribed sugar
or honey over the wound. I thought the Vet was barking mad! She
explained that sugar and honey for wounds have been used since
ancient Egyptian times. She used it on herself when she got a
cut.
Years later I had a chance to really
put this to a test.
I had a doe that I had bought but couldn't get bred.
The last time I tried to breed her, the buck I chose actually
attacked her. By the time I got her out of the cage she had some
pretty good puncture wounds on her left shoulder. I washed and
disinfected the wounds.
Puncture wounds are the worst kind of wound since they heal on
top before the flesh below heals and infection can often set
in.
By the second day all the skin/hide in a 3 to 3.5 inch area around
the puncture wounds had dried up, died and hide/skin had
actually gone as stiff as a board.
I sat the doe on my lap and with a pair of surgical scissors
and nail clippers, I slowly cut away all the dead fur and skin.
The wounds where filled with white toothpaste like puss which I
gentle squeezed out from the puncture holes.
I cleaned out the wounds and disinfected them with peroxide and
mild iodine.
I now had a huge area of raw meat
exposed. I had never seen anything in all my years with horses,
as bad as this rabbit. The doe sat patiently while I did all
of this, I was sure she trusted that I was going to make
everything all better. It was that faith that made me continue
treating her and not put her down. With a wound that bad I was
at a loss as to what to apply to it since the rabbit would lick
it off and ingest whatever I used. Then I decided to apply
Honey.
I cut the fur short around the area of the wound.
I put a thick coating of honey on the wound and gently covered it
with a light gauze from my first aid kit.
I held little to no hope that the bandage would still be there
10 minutes from now or that the honey would help.
I put some water soluble antibiotic in her water to help fight
off an infection.
The next morning the doe had moved only a small amount of the
bandage away and had licked off some of the honey. To my total
surprise the wound was clean and the flesh had taken on a
strange rubbery texture. It was moist without being weepy. The
puss didn't return either. Over the next three days I would
clean and disinfect the wound and reapply the honey. Each day
the wound would shrink smaller and smaller. By the end of the
week the existing/surrounding fur slowly closed over the wound. The rabbit
was fine and went on to be a pet bunny with no sign she ever had
a huge cut. My only regret was that I didn't have a camera at
the time to document it.
While I researched the subject of Honey, I found that some
researchers are finding Honey to be effective on wounds with
antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria.
Not all honey is a like. During the research some honey was
found to be better than others. It depended on what plants where
available to the bees.
Below are some articles on this
topic in more depth and not rabbit related.
http://www.worldwidewounds.com/
www.dermnetnz.org/treatments/honey.html
http://www.umfactivemanukahoney.com/
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