Broken Whiskers?

[EmilyL]

 Hello all!

I have never done any grooming or maintenance or whatever with Abby’s ears… I’ve never gotten a straight answer as to whether or not it’s harmful. Abby’s whiskers are looking pretty bad. Some of them have a bent/broken looking end. Some of them look really short, like they broke off almost completely or something.  Some of them are really thick in places and seem brittle. What causes this?? Is it some sort of nutritional imbalance or something? Or are they just worn down and need to be trimmed (like dead ends on hair)?

Any help would be appreciated… thank you!

<3 Emily and Abby

[Stickerbunny]

Is Abby a rex? If so, the scraggly look on the whiskers is normal. Don’t trim whiskers.

[EmilyL]

I think she’s a dutch… I rescued her so I’m not 100% sure but from what I’ve seen and descriptions and stuff I think she’s a dutch…

[Stickerbunny]

She could be a mix, an easy way to tell if a rabbit has rex in them is to feel their fur. Rex fur is velvet like in texture, extremely dense and rather short. Not sure what a dutch’s whiskers are normally like. It is possible she could have damaged them at her old home as well. If she isn’t disoriented at all I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Has she had a vet check though, since she is a rescue?

[EmilyL]

Yeah I rescued her like, 18 months or 2 years ago-ish. Since then I’ve had her spayed and checked out and everything. She had cancer in her uterus when they spayed her so I’m paranoid about every little thing. Abby’s fur is very soft… when I first started reading about them I thought she was a rex based on her coat but everything else seems like a dutch. I could be wrong though lol, I haven’t pet many rabbits besides her so maybe I just think it’s dense and like velvet and what not haha. And I know Dutch rabbits are more common. I keep thinking I’ll just let them be but they look like they keep getting worse and the super short ones are all bumpy and think. The other ones feel the same in some places but not as bad as the ones that broke off.

[EmilyL]

When I google image rex rabbits and dutch I think she looks just like the Dutch. Coat included now that I really look. I guess Abby is just a super soft rabbit, I think her hair is longer than the pictures of the rex’s.

[lwayne]

My Leo has long whiskers and some of them do look like they get ‘dead ends’. Some of his whiskers change from white to black half way through and sometimes break off. Although, I’ve actually seen Arduina bite off Leo’s whiskers.. I feel really bad for him, since I know whiskers are pretty sensitive. But you have just one bunny?

Can you get us a picture of her whiskers?

[EmilyL]

Yep, just Abby! I might be able to take a picture of the whiskers tomorrow using my webcam… And yes, they look like dead ends. I’m pretty into anatomy and science and such and my basic knowledge about whiskers and hair is that there aren’t actually any nerve endings in the whisker itself (Whiskers and hair are made up of mostly dead protein). They can use them to sense things because the base of the whisker, underneath the skin is packed with nerve endings. Kind of like how you can feel it if you move your hand along the hair on your arm you can feel it, but you can cut that hair without any pain. I don’t want to trim them short or anything, but all of my anatomy knowledge tells me that I’d be able to trim these ‘dead ends’ and not hurt her. I know they use them for balance and judging how big a space is but I don’t think it would be painful or harmful to trim off half an inch. And I wouldn’t be doing it for aesthetic reasons, but I wonder if I could prevent the big breaks that make some of her whiskers really short by just trimming the broken ends.

I only say all this stuff to ease your mind lwayne…. I don’t think Leo is being hurt by Arduina biting off his whiskers. That would kill me to think he was in pain for something like that.

[LittlePuffyTail]

Bindi (my Mini-Lop_) gets broken, frayed whiskers sometimes. Sometimes they actually split and turn into two whiskers. I trim the frayed whiskers with the nail clippers and he doesn’t seem to mind.

[Beka27]

I have had to trim my mini rex’s whiskers before. Since they are curly, sometimes I’ll look and there’s a long one that is curling up into her eye. I trim it so it doesn’t cause an irritation. I’m guessing it’s like human eyebrows or eyelashes, they can be removed and they grown back.

[LittlePuffyTail]

Stormy gets that too Beka. I can’t imagine it bothers them too much to have their whiskers clipped a bit. They are so similar to horses and a lot of people shave all the whiskers off their horse’s muzzles. I don’t shave Winnie’s but I clip them when they get super long.

[Bam]

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