Rabbit Barbering

[svaz15]

I have a spayed female rabbit that is BLOWING out her fur, but we noticed that she has patches of barbered fur. She is a rescue, and still not comfortable with being handled. We have caught her two times now to do serious brushing and plucking, but are slowly getting her comfortable with gentle brushing.
We have a neutered male, that is much smaller, and probably the more dominant, but I am not sure. They never fought during bonding, he just would hump her (which has stopped since). We never see him grooming her, but we do see her grooming her self (but doesn't seem like an excessive amount)
Their diet is a variety of greens, two types of hay at all times, and Versele-laga pellets.
The are free-roam in a large bedroom (rabbit proofed), and have LOTS of toys and hay houses to destroy, but neither are toy motivated (any recommendations for AWESOME toys would be greatly appreciated)
I am trying to figure out what is the trigger for the barbering. I think it may be stress from having been caught up for the major grooming, since it was seen after we did it the first time, and the extent of it was seen the second time. But anyone have ideas of how to discover the cause and how to fix it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[JBun]

Barbering fur can occur for a variety of reasons. My female rabbit barbers a small patch on her bunny partner, and nothing can really be done about that as she is just overgrooming him. I had another rabbit do it due to a protein deficiency, which was corrected with an increase of protein in her diet. I realized this because she was also losing some weight. It was due to a change of hay that was more coarse and had less protein in it.

Other possibilities are insufficient fiber in the diet, boredom, stress, false pregnancy, or a skin disease causing irritation. You will just need to figure out which is the cause, and if possible correct it.