As the title says, are you ready to handle this amount of shed? The above picture may be abit scary, but this is what a heavy shed looks like. They dont always shed this amount during all these shedding cycles. Sometimes the shed is gradual, and there wont be patchy coat.
Parasites can indeed cause shedding. But lets just focus on a healthy rabbit with just a seasonal shed, without the parasites.
Rabbits do shed regularly, and that's just the fact
In Singapore's weather, they shed to about 3-4 times a year. Usually when temperature/weather changes. When rabbits shed, they change their full body of coat. They wont drop all in 1 day, but the shedding can last from 2weeks to 3months. If your rabbit is still finish up the previous shed cycle, it may experience a new shed cycle overlapping.
But I have found that if you keep your rabbits in constant temperatures of 18-20 degrees 24/7, the rabbits shed remarkably less, i have experienced 2x a year of shedding. And the shed period only lasts 1 week. Plus, they have thick and beautiful coats hehehe.
How to check for shedding?
Some of you may experience gradual shedding only. But a big proportion of rabbits that we encounter this past 2 months are going through a heavy shed like these where the inner new baby coat is all grown out, but the new hair is still attached. In such cases we reccomend to remove all the currently loose old cpat as much as possible when they come for grooming.
U can check if your rabbit is shedding by blowing into your rabbits coat, or just parting the fur with ur fingers, if ur rabbit is not shedding, u will see pink skin. If your rabbit is shedding, u will see tiny short fur covering the skin. If u do see tiny fur and no skin at all, then its a good time to start brushing daily or even more frequent. When the new fur is grown, it pushes the old fur off the skin, which also means the old fur is not attached to the skin anymore.. thats why u see more fur flying around the house or being stuck on fans.. slight patting n stroking, and heaps of fur come off.
Or when the rabbit scratches himself and fur drops off...
Shedding problems...
Rabbits are fastidious groomers , they lick themselves all the time and these loose coat surely will end up being swallowed cos they cant spit fur nor cough up hair balls... So most of the fur end up being in the tummy... Which can cause wool blockage, or other gastro-intestinal complications if their gut is not functioning well to remove all the fur.. if u have 2 or more rabbits, they generally groom each other n may ingest each others fur also.
So bottomline is:
Brush your bunnies to remove these loose coat!
If you're worried about fur flying all over your house, u can keep a vaccum cleaner nearby.
You can consider this grooming product that we use at home as well as at our grooming salon to minimise fur flying everywhere. We used to sell the neabot machine, but not anymore. So we'll just be recommending a slightly better tool i have found on Shopee. Do note that, we are not related to the seller in any way, just sharing an efficient and good value product
https://s.shopee.sg/g55mvKNrq
You can find more product info at the link above. Basically its a small vaccum with various attachments for different uses.
Tools from left to right: nail grinder, paw pad trimmer, shaver, crevice cleaner, lint roller, slicker brush and lastly the deshedder.
We use slicker brush and deshedder alot for shedding animals.