Strange fur loss pattern

[Funzodied222]

Hi everyone,

Over about the past month I have noticed that my 10-month-old female Rex rabbit lost hair in an odd stripe pattern and never grew it back. She is currently housed with one other female mini lop, they are both bonded but have the occasional game chasing ( I’m unsure whether this is purely for fun or if the mini lop is trying to assert dominance). I spoke to my vet about the hair loss issue, and she told me that it could be fleas or it could be caused by bullying from her partner. The vet prescribed an ointment to get rid of the fleas, and she instructed me that I should house them in separate areas to see if stress caused the hair loss. I separated them for the instructed two weeks, but I saw no change in her fur. I have attached a couple of images of the strange pattern in hopes that another rabbit owner has had a similar problem. I recently noticed that the pattern Is the same width of bars on her X-Pen cage, so I am curious if that so the problem, as she tends to lay down on the edges of her cage. If anybody could help me find the source of her hair loss problem it would be greatly appreciated.



Thankyou,

Daniel.

Link to the photos of my rabbit http://imgur.com/a/QrgpW

[Theposhbunny]

Hi Daniel! It’s hard for me to tell on my phone because your bunny has white hair, but it’s in one certain spot? If your bunny lays against her cage quite frequently she might be losing hair due to friction of the bars?

[Funzodied222]

Hello,
The fur loss issue occurs all over her back, however I believe I have discovered the cause of the problem. She began to lose significant amounts of hair after I reunited the pair, due to this I grew suspicious and used a wall mounted camera to record them throughout the day and I discovered that there is quite a fair amount of bullying while I am not present. I will be getting my mini lop desexed next week in hopes that it fixes the problems. She wasn’t desexed until now because she is very small and has a birth defect on her leg that made my vet advise me to not desex her. Since then I have found multiple vets who say desexing a rabbit her size can be done with no added caution so I will be going through with it. Thank you for replying to my post so quickly I appercriated it dearly in my time of stress.

Kind regards,
Daniel.

[jerseygirl]

Good to hear you may have gotten to the root of the problem. I hope the mini lop’s procedure goes well!

Im curious to know if the fur loss on her back occured in the stripe pattern also? I could only see the loss on her head in the photos. To me, that seemed more like normal moult or some overgrooming from the other rabbit.

[Funzodied222]

Hello,
The fur loss on the back is also in a stripe pattern but slightly different in my opinion. Here is a link to a better photo of the strange pattern.
http://imgur.com/yuKEwv3

[jerseygirl]

Oh I can see now! It’s sort of like ripple lines.
I wonder if she is part Astrex rex? Astrex rabbits have a sort of curly/wavy rexed fur.

[Funzodied222]

Im unsure whether she is part astrex. I got her from a breeder at a fair that came to town. I know it’s not the best to buy rabbits from these places but she was in such awful conditions and i was scared she wouldn’t be adopted because they had many lop rabbits that drew the attention away from her. I still have the breeders card but I doubt that they would know her breed, they didn’t know how to properly identify a rabbits sex and when I asked for the breed they just said standard rabbit. However I’m quite sure the fur loss is from the bullying as it started to occur about 2 months after we got her.

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