Small bald patch on Charlie's ear

Dear Rabbit Lovers,

A few days ago I noticed a small (about 4-5 mm diameter) bald patch on Charlie's ear.

https://www.imageupload.co.uk/image/Dv1I

Apart from the small area of hair loss, he seems perfectly healthy and happy. He does not seem to be irritated by it - no sign of scratching. No sign of hair loss anywhere else on his body. It cannot be overgrooming by another rabbit as he is currently a bachelor, living a parallel life adjacent to his not-so-friendly female friend.

No discharge and the inside of the ears look perfectly healthy. He lives in the garden in a decent size hutch+run+tunnel+extension combo.

Any ideas?
Thanks for any suggestions.

Lagomorphine said:

Dear Rabbit Lovers,

A few days ago I noticed a small (about 4-5 mm diameter) bald patch on Charlie's ear.

https://www.imageupload.co.uk/image/Dv1I

Apart from the small area of hair loss, he seems perfectly healthy and happy. He does not seem to be irritated by it - no sign of scratching. No sign of hair loss anywhere else on his body. It cannot be overgrooming by another rabbit as he is currently a bachelor, living a parallel life adjacent to his not-so-friendly female friend.

No discharge and the inside of the ears look perfectly healthy. He lives in the garden in a decent size hutch+run+tunnel+extension combo.

Any ideas?
Thanks for any suggestions.

Click to expand...

Hi there Lagomorphine, and welcome to the Forum :wave:

I'm really sorry you've had no replies so far.

Looking at the photo of Charlie's ear, it would seem to me that he's scratched this little bit of fur off his ear.
What do you think?

BTW - he's rather gorgeous. Of course he looks like my Max

hi lagomorphine - i had very similar issue with one of mine few weeks back (i posted on here too as was concerned) - looked very similar to yours .. two bald patches near edge of his lug. No sign of beasties, no sign of blood/trauma. Bunny was his normal self. Never found out what happened but the fur simply re-grew over the next week or so. Yet another great rabbit mystery
Hopefully same with charlie...

Hello MightyMax and Griffski,

Thanks for your comments. In some ways the lack of other responses is reassuring, I don't think I need to worry about it too much. I will keep an eye on it of course. Maybe, as MightyMax suggested, he just scratched his ear a bit too hard.

The only other thing I can think of is that a few weeks ago he was stung by a wasp on the ear - unbeknown to us wasps started to build a nest in one of the corners of the garden and while he was out on his usual daily supervised free-range time, he disturbed them. So he got stung by one of them. (And probably saved the rest of the family from being stung.) He suddenly went very docile and subdued, so we rushed him to the vet. By the time we got there half an hour later, he was back to normal, haha:lol:. However it is not impossible that this is some late reaction to the sting.

Other than that, I have no idea. But thanks for our ideas, it's much better to receive responses like "hmm, it's probably nothing" than "oh my God, that's a typical sign of the dangerous otopathy alopecia cuniculi or whatever".

Thanks for the compliments, MightyMax, he's quite a dashing young buck. Indeed he's similar to your Max (English Spot?) He has only been with us for a couple of months. Previously he lived on a farm in a hutch... He looked bored, so I parted with some money and took him home. I think he's happier now. He can tunnel, zoom and binky. If only his social skills were a bit better developed, he could join Willow Gannet, Queen of the Garden. But maybe one day...