kittens biting hear problem :(

[Glamouresque]

Hi everyone, I come to you for your advices on a behaviour of my 18 days kittens.
I want to know if this append frequently for higher generations ?
They are F4 SBT, but we can see the wild factor is there... dad is a very intense stud.

I was going to take nice pictures today and...
....picture is better than a description.

This is Degas, the bad boy of the pack.

This is Rodin, a big boy also. Both of is hears are bloody.


They fight a lot together.
I was thinking a chewing toy might help. Maybe a sour product. I am not sure what is safe for this tender age. A collar is maybe an option ?

The ears are super clean, and they don't scratch them (for now).

 

[Brigitte Cowell]

Are you sure the kittens are doing it to each other or the mom is overgrooming the kittens' ears?

 

[Glamouresque]

You think it could be mom ? I see them fighting a lot, but what is strange is they got the bloody ears at the same time, now its less bloody. It probably just happened

I am not sure, she moved them yesterday, she doesn't like to see them climbing and getting out of the nest.
maybe she is a bit stressed, but she looks calm.
The gentle boy is ok, no hear bites. I will try to look at the wound to try to find out, and check on them often.
Mom doesn't want the kitten park (with higher walls), so they can escape the nest easily since yesterday.

 

[Brigitte Cowell]

She may be overgrooming due to worry over their activity...the leaving of the nest and their wrestling etc.

The pics looked like overgrooming to me...

 

[Glamouresque]

it looks like they where chewed on, I don't see a biting hole. Maybe you are right with mom overgrooming.

 

[Patti]

Are you sure the kittens are doing it to each other or the mom is overgrooming the kittens' ears?

Just what I was going to post Brigitte, I've had more than one mom overgroom a kitten to the point of having bloody ears.

 

[Glamouresque]

Can it get very bad ? or it will stop by itself.
It looks like a piece is missing for Rodin.
Mom usually is very gentle mom, even with the other kittens.

 

[Brigitte Cowell]

It depends on the queen, some can do a LOT of damage so it is not something to take lightly... monitor carefully.

With the one and only queen I've experienced this with, with the first litter she only targeted one kitten (the most adventurous) and I found a bitter lick-stop pet lotion that dissuaded her so that the ear healed and they were close to weaning age when she started this behavior. The second litter she had she was worse with, especially one kitten where we ended up putting a tiny conehead on her for a couple weeks until old enough to wean. We worked super-hard those weeks getting them to start eating solids. Yet that one kitten as adult has scarring on her outer ears and the fur never grew...
You can see in the last pic how her outer ears are lacking fur at the base and so makes her face look funny. She is also very sensitive about anyone touching her ears :-(

We spayed the queen after the second litter, fortunately neither of her daughters put into programs slowed the slightest tendency to do this to their kittens!

 

[Glamouresque]

wow looks similar.
Thank you for your experience with this, this is my fear a big scar on one of the ear, or worse.
You removed them from the queen ? They are not even 3 weeks now, but 2 kittens is not a good sign

 

[Brigitte Cowell]

No, we didn't remove them at 3 weeks of age. As I said, we used bitter lotions and a conehead eventually to keep them with mama until they were eating solids (so 5-6 weeks). Seeing the scarring that Nadiya now has on her ears though, I wonder if we would have done better with separating from mama and having scheduled visits with her for nursing while I was there to keep her from grooming the ears.