Q&A    Questions and Answers:

I was browsing pages on horsemanship looking for tips to stop tail-biting when I came across your page! (if you have any ideas, please share them!) Your site is very informative. Thank you for your time and effort in sharing your knowledge with the general public.

A few things come to mind that could be causing the tail biting:

1. A skin disease, such as psoroptic mange. [See the next Q & A for more on Mange.]

2. Dry or sunburned skin.

3. (And somehow this strikes me as the more likely) a nutritional deficiency. Several years ago, I worked at University of Minnesota Hospitals as a Senior Laboratory Technician. One of the projects I worked on involved rabbits that were fed a diet lacking in the amino acid Methionine. After a few days on the diet, the rabbits began to eat their own hair -- evidently to make up for the methionine deficiency. You may want to try some of the supplemental feeds at your local feed store to see if one of them helps.

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