Numerous things can be done to keep flies populations down.
- keep things clean! Can’t stress that enough, the cleaner and drier your rabbitry is, and the cleaner and drier your rabbits are, the less flies you’ll have around.
- keep your compost and/or manure pile away from the rabbits by at least 10 feet.
- hang small ziploc bags filled with water and 5-6 pennies – not sure why it works, but it does.
- hang wasp traps to catch the persistent ones. what works for me is to use three different traps, each filled differently
- Hang a bit of meat over water in a wasp trap container. Bees go to the meat, fall off and land in the water
- Pickle juice - to catch those annoying tiny flies
- Lemon aid... preferrably made from real lemon with real sugar. Catches most anything I find.
- Make a variety of fly traps.
- Banana peel with a boiled sugar/water mix poured over it. Something in the banana peel will kill the flies. 1 c water, 1/2 c sugar, 1/2 c vinegar over one banana peel. Place in an old milk jug.
- Poke holes in the lid of a jar (just big enough for flies to crawl in threw). Mix 1/4 c vinegar, 1/4 c sugar, 1 c water. place in jar and cover with lid.
If you do get fly strike time is of the essence as the toxins released by the growing maggots will kill a rabbit swiftly. Remove all maggots, give a flush to the area with peroxide, and just hope that you got them all. REMOVE the rabbit to someplace with zero fly population and just hope that the rabbit makes it. I’ve used ivermectin before which acts quickly, but you’re still just hoping that the rabbit will want to live.