Shedding the baby coat

[majorv]

I have a Polish buck who is now 6 months old and he has yet to shed his baby coat. It's still just as long and fluffy as it was when he was 3 months old. On the suggestion ofseveral breeders I put a couple of drops of ivermectin between his shoulder blades to try and trigger a moult. It's now been several weeks and all I can see is that the color on the coat has fadedand somewhat discolored, but no shedding.

I've never had a rabbit not shed his baby coat by this time, but this is my first experience with a Polish. Anyone else have suggestions on getting him to blow his baby coat, or should I just be patient? Our first rabbit show is in a little over a month and I'd planned to show him...:?

 

[CCWelch]

I don't think that with the faded coat you will be able to show him and have him do well. Try feeding some high protein stuff like oats plus black oil sunflower seeds for a few week then drop him off them, it should trigger a molt but he will not be done molting by show time.

 

[majorv]

I didn't figure he'd show well anyway since he doesn't have an adult coat and he's now considered a senior. I'll try your suggestion. I really thought that when the weather turned warm he'd moult. I also thought about bringing him inside in the A/C to see if I could trigger a moult.

 

[RabbitSmarties]

I've bred Polish for several years, and have definitely found that some of them take a long time to really bloom into their senior coat. The good news is that those bunnies hold a good coat for a long time, too!

I think a rabbit's coat growth is linked to its metabolism. They say you can speed up the process and get your bunny in show condition faster by increasing the protein or energy in your feed. A simple way to do this is throw a palm full of calf-manna in your rabbit’s feed every day. You can keep your rabbit on high protein/high energy feeds until the new coat is just about primed—then cut the conditioners. Once the rabbit has its show coat, you want it to keep it as long as possible. Diets with high fiber take longer to digest and make the metabolism slow down. Abundant timothy or grass hay is an important part of a show rabbit’s diet: not only is hay high in fiber, but rabbits with hay to play with seem less inclined to chew on their own or their neighbor’s coats.