Summer Ear

After taping.

Fluffy ear fountain.

Are you looking at me?

Some supplies.

There are many temperature related problems with English Angoras and Summer Ear is one of the most disappointing. After raising a beautiful litter of bunnies all the way through 6 to 7 weeks of childhood, you look at them one day and find one ear is lopped down. The day before it was perfectly fine standing up in a perfect "V" shape and today it looks like it was broken during the night by a mob of bad bunnies. If left alone, the bunny will never be able to show and it can cause other ear related problems. The bunny cools itself through it's ears and if it is hanging down this makes that more difficult plus a bunny growing long ear furnishing can find them dragging along the ground.

The heavy furnishing growing out on a young bunnies ears in warm weather causes this problem. The weight of the new wool and sometimes bigger ears developing in the heat, puts stress on the ear cartilage. A solution that has worked for me is to gently give support to the ear base with tape. I have used 1" cloth surgical tape loosely wrapped around the base of the ears a few times making a tube to support the ear base but lately I have found plastic postage tape to give better support. I take this off once a week to check for improvement and re-apply. Or the bunny removes it for me. Sometimes it needs to be on for up to month or until the weather gets cooler. Most times the ears carriage will develop normally. The bunnies don't seem to even mind it after an initial scratch at it.