mr_rebecca
Young Bun
Hi everyone, I have been a lurker on your site for quite some time, but have never made an account of posted untill now.
I will apologise right not for how long this is, I just want to cover everything
I have two mini lops, a girl and boy, and they're both spayed/neutered, and have lived together since the beginning of the year. The female is the one I am having problems with, and she is two years old, and called Penny. The male will be one in july and is called Peanut.
They are house rabbits, but are only in the cage for the 8 hours while im asleep, or If i go out. They live in a two tier cage, so they have lots of space And i would say they are generally very happy and very helathy, or at least I try my very hardest to keep them that way.
Ok brief background over, now for the problem.
For a while now, we keep finding Penny pulling mountains of hair out of herself, with a giant pile of hair next to her, as well as a worrying amount of hair in her mouth. Everytime I find her I pull all the hair out of her mouth (obviously) and then put her back in her cage for a little while with some alfalfa hay and medow hay (I only give them alfalfa hay as a treat, or when she does this as she really likes her and it encourages her to eat it. I worry that shes going to get a blockage and possibly GI statis which Ive been through once and wasn't fun, so I hope that the hay will prevent this from happening. I keep her in her cage for a little while just so I can watch her and make sure she dosen't do it again, but so far she never has. As soon as all the hair is out of her mouth, she is totally fine and back to normal. She eats and drinks normally, and is the same as ever, jumping about and playing.
One time, however, she started coughing, and did so for about... 4-5hours, but i suspect she just had some hair lodged in her throat that she couldn't move. She still acted as normal, just with the odd cough here and there.
One of the really odd things about it though is that she has only ever done it in my mams room. Shes allowed pretty much all over the house (With supervision of course ) but she has only ever done it while sitting under my mams desk in her room? So we've completely banned her from there now, in the hope that that will stop it, but even so, why on earth would being in a certain room trigger her? Its not as if it is very differnt from the rest of the house?
She has only done this about 7? times in the past 3 months, but to be quite honest its 7 times too many.
I wondered if she could be going through a false pregnancy, but she shows no other symptoms of this. I also wondered if she could be attention seeking or unhappy, but my whole family adore her and she gets constant attention from me. Even when my boyfriend is around, he seems to play with her more than I do!, and she responds so well to him. It absolutly breaks my heart to think there might be something making her unhappy, that could be causing this, or even worse that there is something wrong with her.
I haven't contacted the vet with this yet, since its not really a medical problem, and I don't really want to waste a valuble appointment if its going to be nothing, Plus, im pretty sure that people on here will be far more helpful and probably will be able to help better than my vet lol
I don't know what to do about it. I don't know whether I should let it ride its course, or if there is something I can do about it for her. I love her very much, and I would do absolutly anything for her. Im happy to spend as much time and money on fixing this, if anyone knows what this is, or has any ideas of what I can do, it would all be greatly appreciated.
Thank you so much for your time, and again, I apologise for the length of this post!
I will apologise right not for how long this is, I just want to cover everything
I have two mini lops, a girl and boy, and they're both spayed/neutered, and have lived together since the beginning of the year. The female is the one I am having problems with, and she is two years old, and called Penny. The male will be one in july and is called Peanut.
They are house rabbits, but are only in the cage for the 8 hours while im asleep, or If i go out. They live in a two tier cage, so they have lots of space And i would say they are generally very happy and very helathy, or at least I try my very hardest to keep them that way.
Ok brief background over, now for the problem.
For a while now, we keep finding Penny pulling mountains of hair out of herself, with a giant pile of hair next to her, as well as a worrying amount of hair in her mouth. Everytime I find her I pull all the hair out of her mouth (obviously) and then put her back in her cage for a little while with some alfalfa hay and medow hay (I only give them alfalfa hay as a treat, or when she does this as she really likes her and it encourages her to eat it. I worry that shes going to get a blockage and possibly GI statis which Ive been through once and wasn't fun, so I hope that the hay will prevent this from happening. I keep her in her cage for a little while just so I can watch her and make sure she dosen't do it again, but so far she never has. As soon as all the hair is out of her mouth, she is totally fine and back to normal. She eats and drinks normally, and is the same as ever, jumping about and playing.
One time, however, she started coughing, and did so for about... 4-5hours, but i suspect she just had some hair lodged in her throat that she couldn't move. She still acted as normal, just with the odd cough here and there.
One of the really odd things about it though is that she has only ever done it in my mams room. Shes allowed pretty much all over the house (With supervision of course ) but she has only ever done it while sitting under my mams desk in her room? So we've completely banned her from there now, in the hope that that will stop it, but even so, why on earth would being in a certain room trigger her? Its not as if it is very differnt from the rest of the house?
She has only done this about 7? times in the past 3 months, but to be quite honest its 7 times too many.
I wondered if she could be going through a false pregnancy, but she shows no other symptoms of this. I also wondered if she could be attention seeking or unhappy, but my whole family adore her and she gets constant attention from me. Even when my boyfriend is around, he seems to play with her more than I do!, and she responds so well to him. It absolutly breaks my heart to think there might be something making her unhappy, that could be causing this, or even worse that there is something wrong with her.
I haven't contacted the vet with this yet, since its not really a medical problem, and I don't really want to waste a valuble appointment if its going to be nothing, Plus, im pretty sure that people on here will be far more helpful and probably will be able to help better than my vet lol
I don't know what to do about it. I don't know whether I should let it ride its course, or if there is something I can do about it for her. I love her very much, and I would do absolutly anything for her. Im happy to spend as much time and money on fixing this, if anyone knows what this is, or has any ideas of what I can do, it would all be greatly appreciated.
Thank you so much for your time, and again, I apologise for the length of this post!