Safety of healing salve

[Liung]

After Lahi’s surgery I decided I’d like to get some kind of salve/cream to put on his incision to keep it soft as it scars. It would suck for his ear to become all stiff, it’s kinda amazing as it is that he retains full muscle control of his ear after having the base cut open the way it was.

His scab has already fallen off, and I have a beeswax-based cream from a pet health food store, so it should be nontoxic if he (or Delilah) grooms it off. Thoughts?




His ear immediately after the surgery, and then after only about two weeks—he’s a super healer!

 

[Imbrium]

It looks like it's healing very nicely (poor baby, btw! I missed the story of what happened to him but glad to see him getting better).

Honestly, I was immediately wary of the salve. Just because something is marketed as safe for pets does NOT mean that it is, so it's important to do your due diligence (especially since rabbits metabolize some things differently than cats/dogs and are generally more sensitive to toxins). I bought some all-natural flea topical thing from the dollar store once, only to get home and find that one of the ingredients was toxic to cats and another was toxic to rabbits (despite having a picture of a cat on the package!), making it unsuitable for all of our pets.

I googled a few of the ingredients and didn't find anything alarming at first but when I got to the tea tree oil things started looking iffy.

From another forum:

No info on rabbits, but this is for dogs and cats if that helps.

From the Pet Poison Helpline:

Tea Tree Oil
Poisonous to: cats, dogs

Level of toxicity: Generally moderate to severe, life-threatening

Common signs to watch for:
Low body temperature
Weakness
Walking drunk
Inability to walk,
Tremors
Coma
Increased liver enzymes
Death

Tea tree oil, also known as melaleuca oil, is an essential oil produced from the Australian tea tree (Melaleuca alternifolia) plant. Tea tree oil is known for its antifungal and antibacterial properties, and possibly for its antipruritic, anti-inflammatory, and antiparasitic effects. Tea tree oil is often found in varying concentrations and should never be used on pets. As little as 7 drops of 100% oil has resulted in severe poisoning, and applications of 10-20 mls of 100% oil have resulted in poisoning and death in both dogs and cats. Clinical signs include a low body temperature, weakness, walking drunk, inability to walk, tremors, coma, increased liver enzymes, and even death.

(That post was in response to someone who had used tea tree oil on their rabbit's ears and the rabbit appeared to be having a negative reaction to it.)

Someone on the BunSpace forums posted asking about tea tree oil, starting their post with

I just happened along another thread where someone mentioned that Tea Tree Oil is extremely toxic to rabbits. I Googled it and didn't find anything, though -- just a lot of sites saying to use it on rabbits for different purposes.

And the person who answered them made a number of good arguments in favor of being wary despite not being able to really back up the toxic theory with solid sources.

The other - really big - concern I have with this product is the last ingredient: Bitrex. According to the Bitrex website, "The Guinness World Records lists Bitrex as ‘the most bitter substance in the world.’"

This means that the makers of this salve really, REALLY want to discourage animals from licking at/consuming the product. Adding Bitrex is a really effective way to do that for *some* pets... but unfortunately, rabbits LOVE bitter stuff. When you put no-chew spray on something a rabbit loves to chew, they typically see that as icing on their cake. In other words, the very thing meant to strongly discourage ingestion of the product will most likely make your rabbits lick it up like a leaky ice cream cone. For me, that's reason enough to steer clear.

 

[Liung]

Wow, thanks for the comprehensive answer! Definitely something to be wary of. I think for lack of anything better to use I’m going to use it sparingly and watch very carefully for adverse reactions—tea tree oil is pretty far down the ingredients list so my guess is that the amount is minimal.

Unless you know a better product? Would Vaseline work? I have a small tub of it I use on my nose when I have a bad cold and it’s getting chafed from all the tissues.

Absolutely agree that the pet industry is awful and doesn’t care a whit about safety. The store I work at, though, is truly a pet health food store. There’s no live animals for sale, all the food sold (for cats and dogs) is made with no byproducts, only human grade ingredients. During the time I’ve been working there the owners already completely ejected one food they felt wasn’t healthy enough, and are in the process of ejecting two more. They recently, with great joy, dumped all the Zodiac flea collars they used to stock, because flea collars are the worst. It’s the only pet store I’ve ever been in that doesn’t sell pine/cedar shavings for small animals, they sell only aspen and paper bedding. After I started working there I mentioned that they stocked a lot of Martin Mill’s Little Friends Original Rabbit Pellets, which is made with alfalfa as the first ingredient and is perfect for babies and completely inappropriate for adults; and they had hardly any of the Martin Mill’s Little Friends Timothy Rabbit Pellets, which is not the best in terms of meeting all the nutritional requirements but in its price range is definitely superior to most. The owners called the distributor immediately to return all 6 bags of the original and ordered Timothy to replace them.

Honestly I can’t talk enough about how much I love working at a pet store that is actually dedicated to what is best for pets essentially while I definitely don’t trust the products to be safe I trust my bosses to only sell things they truly believe are safe and effective. If this stuff is actually bad for pets it’s only on the shelf because they had no idea. And they’re going to want to know if it is harmful so they can get it off their shelves ASAP.

As for what happened to Lahi... there’s a thread I made that I... should probably update now that the whole ordeal is pretty much over. I’ll do that and then link to it. TLDR: he had a malignant melanoma at the base of his ear. The surgeons nearly decided to take his entire ear, but eventually decided to make do by taking a significant chunk out of the cartilage. The vet estimated that he may lose function of the ear and likely he’d get a bit of a droop to it. So it’s quite astonishing that he seems entirely unaffected and there’s no noticeable difference in motor function between the two.



Now that the scab has fallen off and the remaining stitches have been pulled out, the only reason you can tell anything happened is that his fur is growing back in at a snail’s pace. It’s been a full month now and his tummy is still completely bald from when they shaved him for his radiographs on Dec 4.

 

[Popsicles]

It looks like it is healing really nicely and putting anything on it could just irritate it more and slow down the healing. If you do insist, don’t use that cream - try savlon, or sudocrem - or whatever you have where you are that is equivalent. Just a simple moisturising cream, e.g. for nappy rash etc, rather than anything with lots of irritating chemicals like tea tree in.

 

[JBun]

If you still would like to put something on it, rubbing some plain vitamin E oil onto the incision site could be an option. It's something that is supposed to be good for us humans to do to minimize scarring, and it's safe if your bun were to lick any off.