Scary article

https://iacuc.wsu.edu/zoonoses-associated-with-rabbits/

I'm so careless that I don't bother washing scratches and bites unless they are bleeding. I guess I should start treating minor scrapes.

Although this information is important, and people handling rabbits should be aware of disease, and familiar with related symptoms, - I have seen such information available for most pet, and meat animals.[you should see the list for chickens]
People with compromised immune systems should take extra precautions, or- not be involved in animal husbandry ...

You can also get tuberculosis from a fish tank but do you think that happens often enough anyone with common sense really considers it when doing tank maintenance? Many even still start the water change suction with their mouths and spit the aquarium water out... Personally not me but I prefer not to needlessly ingest fish poop if for no other reason than the taste. :roll: Much of that article is probably protocol to avoid being held liable for the odd incident at a school or facility hiring staff with unknown health conditions or to also protect from spreading disease between animals. Under normal conditions for rabbit raising it is not generally a concern and most of that is not followed. If you have a normal immune system without major health issues you aren't going to catch much and most rabbit scratches do not result in infection even if they've been on the ground. Otherwise I'd have been a swollen, infected mess half the time. It's one of the few types of wounds I don't immediately rinse off even if bleeding or from nails that had bedding or dirt in them. I rarely went a week without my arms scraped up somewhere and showed up to martial arts class a few times having stuck some electrical tape over my wounds (sticks better than medical or sports tape) on the way out the door to avoid any potentially being deep enough to bleed on someone or my white uniform. I'm so happy we broke tradition and went to black uniforms. :lol:

We sat around eating and drinking in stables full of horses, rabbits, and other animals all the time. We carried drinks around my college animal ag classes as well. My gloves I wore to some outdoor events and so forth had also been worn to clean stalls, I rarely changed my jeans for things even when I might have been kneeling on the floor/ground occasionally, and I had my school shoes or my absolutely everything else shoes I wore at any other time. If not walking around the farm, chicken coop, and stable barefoot. When I don't wear gloves some antibacterial dawn dish soap is good enough after I am done cleaning cages or other messes. I rarely wash my hands for just handling an animal or I'd be washing them until I had no skin left. Aside from when cleaning cages I generally only stop to wash my hands if I get peed on or snake musk. That stinks horribly. While I have plenty of health issues I have never had a zoonotic infection or even much for infected wounds that wasn't from inanimate objects like fences or plants poking me and breaking off. I had to run through a harvested corn field once and 2 weeks later I was trying to figure out the huge abscess on my leg when I pushed out a couple inch chunk of corn stalk. Took a shower and it was fine after that. I couldn't name an infection from an animal bite or scratch that got as infected and I have had a LOT from probably a dozen or more species that includes birds, reptiles, livestock, and exotic mammals. Carnivorous animal scratches or bites are considerably more concern for infection than herbivores. They have a lot more dangerous bacteria that helps counter the bacteria they might run into eating raw meat and is often found on the rest of their body and claws. It's also a good idea to clean snake bites because many have their teeth come out in the wound and you will have a blister there if it starts to heal without dislodging the near invisible pieces first. Rabbits are not such a big deal.

About the only thing you usually are likely to get from contact with properly housed live domestic animals that you won't run into all over outdoors anyway is if ringworm is present. I've luckily never ended up with an infected animal but it's highly contagious. Luckily it's not a huge health risk and not particularly difficult to treat. Just very irritating and spreads quickly before you get it under control. You can get that from any animal and the occasions it has spread from cats or dogs tend to be worse since they often are sharing living quarters with humans and by the time it's noticed it's everywhere instead of confined to the cage the rabbit is in.

akane":33tui90a said:

You can also get tuberculosis from a fish tank but do you think that happens often enough anyone with common sense really considers it when doing tank maintenance? Many even still start the water change suction with their mouths and spit the aquarium water out... Personally not me but I prefer not to needlessly ingest fish poop if for no other reason than the taste. :roll:

Click to expand...

I'm one of those people... most of the time I manage to get it going without the tank water reaching my mouth, though! :lol:

Like the others have mentioned, as long as you are aware of the health of your herd and have a reasonably strong immune system, you probably don't have to run to the sink every 5 seconds to clean every little scratch... heck, I had a sharp-nailed little kit kick me last night and I don't think I cleaned that properly until I was done with all the rabbitry chores.

That said, I may just be a little too focused when I'm in the middle of chores... ain't nothing gonna stop me from getting the rabbits all settled in for the night, because I don't get dinner until they're done!

Years ago, I had rabbits, chickens, ducks, and a 200 sow pig farm. At first when the pigs would bite me, it would get infected and swell some, I would have to scrub it with peroxide, and it would eventually heal, -- but- after a few years I could get bit, and then have the bite rubbed full of hog manure, and it didn't get infected at all- my body would just push the poop out of the wound, and heal right up. When I was asked to donate blood for a friend needing surgery, they tested my blood, - they said I had an impossibly high tetanus titter count in my blood, and started asking me to donate for people who had tetanus ...

Someone lost their limbs because a dog licked them. Dogs had licked them all their life and then suddenly they get licked by one dog and get an unlucky nearly fatal bacteria infection. Life is terrifying.