Grooming too much?

[BunBun18]

I have my lionhead rabbit for a little more than a month now. I don’t know how old he is since the person I got it from found him around their neighborhood. Ever since I had him I notice he likes to scratch or groom his head area a lot. Because of that, i noticed he doesnt have as much hair on top of his head behind the ears. I took him to the vet 2 weeks after I had him and the vet said it was normal and he didn’t have any mites/fleas and was healthy. Now I noticed the head is getting less and less hair. I see him occasionally scratching his head furiously and pulling his ears down while grooming and believe that is why he is losing hair at that spot. There is no other balding spots so I am wondering whether that is healthy for him to be doing that. I brush him almost everyday to prevent his hair from tangling. So is this normal? Is he grooming too much?

[Sarita]

It may be stress related – the grooming since the vet ruled out fleas and mites.

[MissKris&Koji]

I don’t know about the scratching, but I wanted to mention that it seems normal for many rabbits to have “thinner” fur just behind the ears in the nape of the neck area. I don’t know why that is, but if the spot is not truly bald, just less dense/less amount of fur, I would not worry. Rabbits seem to focus on their head area a lot when grooming, and pulling the ears down is part of that, if the vet checked him out and found no mites or other problems I would not be concerned.

Of course he could be overgrooming, but I’m not really sure what to suggest if that is the case and it is behavioral/stress related. I just wanted to point out that’s it’s normal for the fur to be different just behind the ears. You may also see thinning of the fur if the rabbit is going into a molt, and that does sometimes start on the face (though I read usually on the forehead for rabbits that molt face first). “Bald patches” are not always a sign of a problem, but you did the right thing to take him to the vet.

[jerseygirl]

Another member (Bunnytowne) mentioned that lionheads also shed out their first mane at a young age. Maybe it could be the beginning of a shed?

How did your vet check for mites? Sometimes it requires a skin scraping and even then they’re not always sighted. If he continues to lose fur here you might want to talk to your vet about treating for mites anyway.

 

[BunBun18]

Thanks everyone! I hope it’s not stress related. He seems to be pretty happy since I see him doing binkies every so often. I let him out of the cage more than 4 hours a day and roam around a room and the hallway so he should have plenty of exercise. When the vet checked him out, I didn’t see him scrape his skin for mites. He just visually examined BunBun. MissKris, I do hope it’s a normal thing like you said since it is around the nape of the neck. The fur is less dense there and you don’t really notice his skin showing until he flexes his head downward. I’d post a pic up but can’t seem to figure out how to do that through a reply. :/

[MissKris&Koji]

If you use add reply button instead of the quick reply thing at the bottom of the thread, there is a thing under the text box that says attachments. If you click that arrow, you will see a form to include a photo and upload. Once you upload, you will see the file name appear, and you can click insert image to put it into your text.

But, that does sound normal to me. If you like I will post you the back of my bunnies ears, I can see skin in the sparse fur there when he bends his head forward too, the fur is for some reason slightly longer there, finer, and less of it.

[Elrohwen]

Jersey is right that lionheads often shed out their mane at a young age. Some grow them back and some don’t, so it could be perfectly natural that he is shedding his mane out right now and not related to overgrooming at all.

And the skin showing throw at the nap of the neck is pretty normal – both of my buns have more fine and sparse hair there and when they bend forward I can see some of their skin peeking through.

[BunBun18]

Bummer! Tried uploading my picture but too big and I don’t know how to make it a smaller size. :/

I wish I knew exactly how old he is! My vet could only tell me he’s “fairly young”…whatever that means. =( Sounds like it’s a common problem for rabbits to have less dense hair around the neck area. I will keep an eye out and see how things go!

[Monkeybun]

The way I resize pics is i open them with windows Paint, hit Ctrl+w and resize there.

[jerseygirl]

Also make sure file type is not bitmap. Jpegs load easy.

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