Abcesses

Question
Hi!
I was wondering if you can help me figure out why I have started having our rabbits have abscesses. So far I have had one Doe come up with one in her dewlap and one Buck and it was in his dewlap.I lanced them and gave LA200 for a couple of days and so far they have not returned but now I have a different Doe that has one but it seems to be a little lower between the dewlap and left leg. I have not lanced this one yet. Can you tell me some of the causes of abscesses and any info you can share? One thing we did that was different recently right before these came up was we started using evaporative coolers in our barn this summer and put up insulation all around our open pole barn leaving about 12 inches open at the top and bottom, for ventilation. Could the humidity possibly cause this? We are in Texas where it is very humid and hot. We inherited these coolers from a friend and she used these in her barn to help lower the temps and they worked great for her. No health issues that she knew of from them. Also I had our first water brain kits since we did this. I appreciate any info and knowledge you have about this.
Thanks!

Answer
Dear Rhonda,

It's very suspicious that these problems started when you began using the new water cooling system.  The first side-thought I had was remembering that outbreak of Legionnaire's disease in that hotel up north many years ago.  It was finally linked to bacteria growing in the humidity of the air conditioning/ventilation system.

It is possible that some opportunistic pathogen is growing in the system, being aerosolized over your rabbits, and the most vulnerable/stressed individuals, being already immunocompromised, are breaking with infections.  Depending on the type of bacteria, they might also cause birth defects.

I would recommend that you have a culture and sensitivity test done on an abscess to see what species of bacteria you're dealing with:

www.bio.miami.edu/hare/culture.html

It might not be bacteria in the system, but the system itself might be promoting stress in some way and causing resident bacteria to become pathogenic.

You can find a good rabbit vet to help you here:

www.rabbit.org/vets

I hope this helps get you started on solving this problem.

Dana