Ear mites are one of those nuisances that almost every meat rabbit keeper will experience at some time. (In fact, it’s a common affliction of pet rabbits and any rabbits kept outdoors; it can even crop up in house rabbits.)
Ear mites rank up there with nest box eye as a not uncommon problem and one that does not mean you are a bad rabbit keeper. Unless that is, you ignore it and do nothing about it.
Ear mites are simply one of those things you’ll want to know about and know how to treat them when you need to.
Jump to:
- Where Ear Mites Come From (How Rabbits Catch Ear Mites)
- You (or visitors) might unknowingly pass ear mites, too
- Ear mites in hay and bedding
- A Condition that Seems to Pop Up Almost Overnight
- Signs and Symptoms of Ear Mite Infestation
- Simple Home Treatment for Ear Mites (How I Treat Ear Mites in My Rabbit Barn)
- How to Treat Rabbit Ear Mites with Oil
- How Often Should Oil be Applied for Treating Ear mites?
- Cleaning Scabbing and Ear Canker
- Other Effective Treatments for Meat Rabbit Ear Mites
- Rabbit VetRx
- Ivermectin
- Cat Ear Mite Drops
- Cat or Rabbit Flea Drops
- Apple Cider Vinegar
- Honey
- A Note About Tea Tree Oil
- Tips for Success and Rabbit Health when Dealing with Ear Mites
Where Ear Mites Come From (How Rabbits Catch Ear Mites)
Ear mites in rabbits are the result of infestation by the small arachnid, Psoroptes cuniculi. These mites live mostly on host animals. There are many host animals that can harbor ear mites. These include (but are not limited to):
- Other rabbits
- Wild rabbits
- Mice
- Rats
- Rodents
- Raccoons and other wildlife
- Domestic (or stray) cats and dogs
Mites can live a short time off a host animal, usually only a few days but potentially up to two or three weeks. However, weather and climate have an impact on how long mites survive off a host animal.
The ideal conditions for mites to live off a host are cool temperatures and high humidity. They die quicker in high heat and dry conditions, probably from dehydration without a food and hydration source.
This means that cool, rainy weather is prime time for ear mites. If you experience mite problems more when there is stormy weather, you’re not imagining things. This is, truth be told when I see ear mites in my rabbitry. Whether that is because it drives more infected animals through the barn, blows in on the wind, or a combination of both, who knows, but the survival period is increased, so the problem increases.
Rutgers University says that moist body conditions on animals like rabbits may exacerbate the condition, so clean, dry housing for your rabbits is good prevention for mites, too.
You (or visitors) might unknowingly pass ear mites, too
It is also possible for ear mites to be on your clothing, and you might unwittingly pass it to your rabbits when you feed or handle them. The same goes for visitors. The mites wouldn’t bother you, so you probably wouldn’t realize they’re there.
If you handle pets or other livestock that are carrying mites, they might come off your clothes. If you hunt and handle wildlife or spend time where wild animals are, it’s possible to pick up some mites that get transferred.
Of course, any visitors to your rabbitry can, too. This is something to keep in mind if you have visitors petting or handling your rabbits who hunt, have pets or rabbits, because they might bring them in on their clothes.
Ear mites in hay and bedding
Many people will say that ear mites come from dusty hay or bedding. There could be a bit of truth in this, but ear mites almost always come from animal-to-animal contact because, environmentally, the survival rate and period are low when off the body of a host animal.
If you have ear mites transmitting through hay and bedding, it is because something dropped mites or eggs in the bedding recently. Or hay or bedding was dropped somewhere where eggs or mites were dropped.
This can happen if rodents or even domestic cats or chickens, etc. crawl through your hay or bedding and drop mites there.
To avoid this issue, here are some tips:
- Keep hay and bedding up off the floor
- Keep hay and bedding dry and clean and out of the reach of pets and rodents (if possible)
- Control rodent populations (always essential in the rabbitry anyway!)
- Don't pick up and reuse hay or bedding that has dropped on the floor or ground – especially if you know you have had mites around!
- Treat your domestic pets for fleas regularly and keep strays out of the rabbit area
A Condition that Seems to Pop Up Almost Overnight
Ear mites initially work deep down in the parts of the rabbit ear canal that you wouldn’t typically see. So, it’s easy not to know that they are there in the beginning of the infestation. They can be seen with the naked eye, but they’re tiny and difficult to see, so it’s not likely that you would know your rabbit(s) have mites until scabs and symptoms appear.
When this happens, it may seem like the mites popped up almost overnight. This can leave you feeling pretty bad as a rabbit breeder, thinking you’ve been neglecting your rabbits.
The fact is, until the outward signs become obvious, it can be hard to know that your rabbits have ear mites. Ditch the guilt and just deal with it.
Signs and Symptoms of Ear Mite Infestation
The most obvious sign of ear mites is scabbing or “canker” in the rabbit’s ears. This becomes apparent after mites have moved in and started to feed inside your rabbit’s ears. They have a fairly short life cycle of about three weeks total, so in reality, this really can crop up in just a few days.
The canker looks like brown, waxy, flaking, peeling scabs in the ear. It is a mixture of scab, mite excrement, wax, and dead skin.
The canker will start low near the canal and move up to the more visible parts of the inside of the ear. If the mites are really bad, they may travel outside the ear, and you may see balding or scabbing on the back of the head or in patches of the rabbit’s fur.
Early signs of rabbit ear mites include the following. They can be easy to miss because they are easily attributed to other things, like biting flies or mosquito bites:
- Rabbit scratching its ears frequently
- Shaking the head
- Scrapes or scratches on the ear and especially inside on the skin of the ear
More obvious signs of rabbit ear mites are when the mites have been there a little longer and are starting to feed more heavily. These are often the first signs you’ll notice, and they include:
- Scabs traveling up the ear from the canal to the inside skin of the ear
- Thick, waxy-looking detritus
- Brown, flaking, waxy buildup
- Sometimes, odor
Simple Home Treatment for Ear Mites (How I Treat Ear Mites in My Rabbit Barn)
My preferred treatment for ear mites is a simple home remedy: an oil application. It’s safe and effective and does not affect the safety of the meat or consuming (eating) the meat.
Oil treatments work by smothering the mites and their eggs. There is a possibility that some of the mites might escape treatment and some of the eggs might survive it, but in my experience, this is a fast and simple, cheap treatment.
Probably anyone can walk into their kitchen, find an acceptable oil, and start treating mites immediately.
If you use a medication-based option, it will probably take you longer to start treatment because you will have to first go shopping for it (unless you keep it on hand, which is possible but might also result in spending money on drugs that do or do not ever get used before their expiration).
An advantage of using oils as ear mite treatments for rabbits is that it works by smothering, not poisoning, so there’s no possibility of the mites becoming immune to it, and there is no withholding period or risk of consumption when eating the rabbit meat.
I have used this treatment a few times, and it always works quickly with little to no repeat infestations. When I have had subsequent infestations, given the timing I’ve considered it a new infestation, not a survival of the last. (In other words, there were too many weeks in between bouts for it to have been the same mites surviving the treatment.)
Some people don’t like this option because they feel that it makes the rabbits shake their heads, and that can shake mites and eggs into the cage and the rabbitry. While this is true, anything that you put in a rabbit’s ear is going to make it shake its head, including ivermectin, and the same “risk” probably exists with it. If the shaken mites/eggs are coated in oil, it should kill them, too, even if they are shaken out.
How to Treat Rabbit Ear Mites with Oil
Treating mites with oil is easy. My preferred oil is mineral oil. Some options include:
- Olive oil
- Vegetable oil
- Coconut oil (which also carries some antibacterial/antifungal properties that might help prevent or control secondary infections)
To treat your rabbits:
- Place two to three drops of oil inside the base of the rabbit’s ear
- Treat both ears at the same time, even if you only see signs in one ear
- It helps to gently massage the base of the ear to work the oil down and around in the ear
- Reapply on a three-day schedule (see below)
- Treat all neighboring rabbits, even if they are not symptomatic, and consider treating the entire rabbitry because mites spread easily from rabbit to rabbit (this is why a cheap and effective treatment is good – easy and cheap to treat everyone at once and be done with it!)
*Pro Tip: Keep a small dropper bottle or two around – it makes applying drops a whole lot easier!
How Often Should Oil be Applied for Treating Ear mites?
There are some variations on how often you should apply the oil to get the mites under control. I usually see improvement immediately, within a day, but I do follow up to catch any new hatches and break the life cycle.
Some people say to treat every day for one or two weeks, some say daily for three weeks, and some have a recommendation that falls on a schedule in between.
Treating with oil is the recommendation given by the University of Mississippi in their publication, Commercial Rabbit Production. Their recommended schedule of application is:
- Treat the rabbit with oil every three days for four applications
So, this would look like:
- Apply oil on day one of treatment, then treat again on
- Day 3
- Day 6
- Day 9
You can add extra treatment days, if you wish, for added insurance. I would wait one week and then give a final dose on
- Day 16
This would just be to err on the side of caution. You may choose to continue to treat up to day 21, but if you have treated regularly on this schedule, you should have broken the cycle, and your rabbits will almost always be mite-free.
When to move on to stronger treatment
Though oil-based is my go-to (and honestly, I’ve never had to resort to anything stronger), you may need to move up to an antiparasitic like ivermectin if oil isn’t doing the job.
Here are some examples of when you might want to choose a stronger medication for treating ear mites:
- If, after several days of treatment, you see no improvement, or if you raise in a colony setup or the rabbitry itself is heavily infested, use something stronger to get a handle on the problem.
- You should see improvement within 24 to 48 hours. Follow-up treatments will provide control for new hatchings. If after 3 days, and certainly by 6, if you don’t think the mites are dying, move up to a stronger medication.
- Use medication for rabbits whose mites have spread to the fur and other parts of their body. It is difficult to cover all the mites when they are in the fur, and the oil has to come into contact with the mites to kill them.
- Heavily infected rabbits or rabbits showing serious damage (head tilt, trouble standing, imbalance) should be more aggressively treated, too.
- Repeat, continuous infestations should be treated with stronger antiparasitic medications
Cleaning Scabbing and Ear Canker
It is tempting to clean your rabbits’ ears to remove the nasty-looking scabs and canker.
It is best to leave the scabby canker alone! The oil will work this free very quickly, and the rabbit will groom, and between the two, the canker will pull off and heal.
If you try to remove the canker or clean it off with swabs, etc., you’re likely to do more harm than good. This would be the equivalent of pulling a scab off a healing cut. You will only open the wound more and expose it to bacteria and pathogens, inviting infection.
Pulling and removing cankers is also painful to the rabbits.
Just leave it alone, and it will come off within a day or two, with healing, closed skin underneath. This is what’s best for your rabbit’s health and comfort!
Other Effective Treatments for Meat Rabbit Ear Mites
Here are some other good options for treating ear mites in meat rabbits:
Rabbit VetRx
VetRx is a great product to have around. I talked about it as being part of my Rabbit First Aid Kit. It works as an immune and respiratory support for traveling rabbits or rabbits under stress. It works excellent as a treatment for ear mites!
VetRx is an all-natural product that you can buy online or at farm and livestock stores. You might even find it in a pet store or pet aisle. It is a combination of natural corn oil and essential oils including camphor, balsam, rosemary, and Origanum (which is oregano oil). Oregano oil has antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, and antifungal properties.
If you can’t find VetRx for Rabbits, buy the solution labeled for other animals (like goat, cat, or dog). The solution and ingredients are the same.
I have used Rabbit VetRx for ear mites, and it does an excellent job. Apply it just like you would apply oil treatments. I would recommend this just as readily as mineral oil. You may not have it in your kitchen, but if you keep some on hand, you'll have it at the ready (and it doesn’t expire so there’s no waste there).
At the end of the day, VetRx is probably nearly as cheap as using a good mineral or vegetable oil, and I like that it has essential oils with repellant and healing properties. It also comes in a convenient squeeze bottle with a dropper cap that makes applying the drops easy.
Ivermectin
Ivermectin is a de-worming medication that is used across many types of livestock. If you want a stronger, medication-based option, this would be it.
Ivermectin comes in injectable form (injected by needle under the skin) or in paste and pour-on liquids. You won’t find it sold for rabbits; you’ll have to buy a general type labeled and sold for other livestock.
Most people use the injectable but use it as a topical drop in the ears or between the ears for both ear and fur mites. A few drops a few days in a row should take care of the infestation.
Note, I personally do not use ivermectin. I have used it in large animals for deworming in the past, but I do not use it for rabbit ear mites. The reason is that it is expensive compared to a bottle of mineral oil that can last for years. I’m open about the fact that a simple, effective home treatment is my first go-to, and that is why Ivermectin is not my first choice.
Also, when we rely on one drug or antiparasitic for all things, it breeds resistance in the parasites. I do not know this to be an issue with mites, but it’s something to think about when choosing what route you want to go for treating your animals in general. My opinion is that when we have simple, effective home treatments that work quickly and humanely, we should use those first so we can save the stronger options for later, and they might still work.
Ivermectin does have a long withdrawal period after using it, too. If you treat a rabbit with mineral oil or a similar oil, there’s no harm or risk to your food, and you could slaughter and eat the same day. With Ivermectin, you need to withhold (not slaughter or harvest) the meat for at least 30 days. That can be a long time to extend the life of grow outs and can impact the efficiency of your harvesting program and the cost of your meat.
All of this said I’m not against Ivermectin if you feel that is your preferred choice. I have seen pictures in rabbit groups of severe infestations from “rehomed” rabbits. To be honest, there were some that I would not hesitate to treat with Ivermectin. Although, to be really honest, I probably would not accept a rabbit with that severe a case into my rabbitry.
Cat Ear Mite Drops
Very simply, the same mites that infect cats' ears infect rabbits, and over-the-counter ear mite drops for cats will work, too.
Cat or Rabbit Flea Drops
These also work but also have the potential to build resistance in the population (similar to how many previously effective cat flea drops have stopped working on fleas). It would be very expensive to use these drops in a meat rabbitry with a substantial number of animals.
They are also systemic and long lasting, and you would really have to do your research to know what withholding period would be required for the meat and if the hides would be safe for consumption for dogs and raw or prey diets, etc. (Keep in mind these types of drops last 30 days on pets for flea control and might have additional, lasting withholding after that initial 30 days.)
This is not an option I would choose for my rabbitry because meat rabbit grow outs don’t live that long. I’d only ever consider it for breeders, but that would have to come after a long research period to know impacts on pregnancy and developing kits, meat withholding times, and more.
Apple Cider Vinegar
Using vinegar on an open wound is questionable for reasons of pain and comfort, but it is an option, and there are a couple of ways to use ACV for mite control.
A small amount of apple cider vinegar (ACV) can be mixed in the oil. This helps with healing, killing, and repelling and is antibacterial.
Apple Cider Vinegar can also be used in the rabbits’ water regularly, which is said to help repel and prevent mites, parasites, and biting insects. ACV has many other good potential uses in the rabbitry.
Honey
Some people make a solution of one tablespoon of honey to three ounces of water and use that like the oil treatment. It sounds sticky and expensive to me, but I do recognize that raw honey has a great deal of natural healing and protective properties, so it’s an option you might consider.
A Note About Tea Tree Oil
For a couple of years, I have mixed tea tree oil into the mineral oil when I applied it for ear mites. It has antifungal, antibacterial, and insect repelling properties. It is recommended by Rise and Shine Rabbitry, rabbit raisers I respect and learn a lot from (among others) -- and still do.
Then one day, it was brought to my attention that there may be issues of toxicity with tea tree oil and rabbits. I went researching. I looked for a university reference, but that was difficult to come by. There are some veterinarians online warning against using it.
As with many things, the issue does not seem to be specifically studied for rabbits, at least not in depth. The information comes mostly from anecdotal incidents and/or information relating to cats and dogs.
The concern seems to be mostly in what concentration the essential oil is used for rabbits (and other small animals) and in people applying the oil at full strength instead of diluting it in a carrier oil (mineral oil would be a diluting carrier oil). However, it seems to be thought that in the home setting, it is difficult to measure or achieve accurate low dosing, and so the advice is not to use it. I can see the logic in this.
I will say that I have used tea tree oil and had absolutely no problems at all, but given the concern and the information (or lack thereof) regarding it, I have to say, use at your own risk. I personally have stopped using tea tree oil, primarily because we do have other safe options that are just as cheap and easy (maybe cheaper). Rabbit VetRx is one.
Tips for Success and Rabbit Health when Dealing with Ear Mites
Here are some good, basic housekeeping and management tasks to help you get control of and possibly prevent ear mite infestations in your rabbitry. You may not be able to control them all, but you can do a lot to minimize contact, spread, and incidents.
- Empty drop pans regularly (you’ll be throwing out eggs and mites if they do find a way in, too)
- Spray out drop pans regularly, weather permitting
- Wash all drop pans with soap and water in the early spring to kill and remove build-up from winter (since it’s harder to clean in winter)
- If you’re not using drop pans, shovel out droppings and waste below the cages (to both remove mites and to make it harder for them to climb to cages)
- If possible, scrub (with hot, soapy water) or power wash cages to get rid of mites and eggs in the cages (this is not always practical, but if possible, it’s a good idea, and if you can’t get control of mites in the rabbitry, it’s a necessary step)
- Use Diatomaceous Earth below cages and around cage legs/bottoms (not recommended on rabbits themselves because it is dust that will be inhaled and can create respiratory problems)
- Wash your barn clothes and coat when you have handled multiple rabbits, been to another rabbitry, or know mites are in the rabbitry
- Keep other animals out of the rabbitry as much as possible
- Treat household pets (cats, dogs) for fleas to help control exposure to mites
- Put Apple Cider Vinegar in water to help repel mites
- Keep nails trimmed on breeders to limit damage from scratching; since you don’t know when ear mites might pop up, trim breeders’ nails at least quarterly and more often if needed
- Keep cages clean and dry
- Clean and replace bedding when mites are present
- Clean, disinfect, and replace nest box bedding and lining when mites are present
- Raise rabbits in wire cages off the ground
- Keep rabbits in good condition with clean, dry coats
- Keep the rabbit barn or area swept out and clean
- Treat all new or traveling rabbits even if you don’t see signs of mites; it’s simple to do, and a few drops of oil just in case can save you a lot of headaches!
- Consider treating rabbits periodically as a preventative measure (for example, apply ear drops when you clip nails or breed, etc.)
- Consider limiting the handling of rabbits by visitors
- House in cages, not colonies, and off the ground
- Arrange housing to limit or eliminate contact with wild rabbits and other fur-bearing animals
- Control mice, rats, and rodents
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