Pulling and eating fur and nipping skin?

[Rinakin]

Hey. I have a problem with my female rat, Freya. She's recently taken to pulling out bits of fur off the faces of my other 4 rats and eating it. She does this so much that it's created bald spots and when there are bald spots she ends up biting the skin and making the the others bleed. When the scabs form on their faces she picks them off and eats them....
I don't really know what to do with her, any help?

 

[jorats]

It sounds like power grooming. But if she's doing it to the point of scabbing, that's not ok.
I would treat all your rats with a mite treatment, preferably, Revolution.

 

[Rinakin]

I'm not sure because she's not pinning the others and doing it, she just grabs their faces and does it. I let her out to be with her other siblings this morning and I put her sister and brother back in the cage with fresh cuts on their faces.
All of them are already on a flea/mite treatment. One of my girls had a flea a few weeks ago. I'm kind of wondering if Freya noticed the flea and was trying to pull it off her sister (the flea was around her face) and is now just paranoid that everyone may have fleas by their faces?

 

[jorats]

Do you have other large pets? I wouldn't be so much concerned about fleas, but more mites/lice. What treatment are you doing?

 

[Rinakin]

I volunteer with dogs at a shelter on occasion so I'm thinking I may have picked up the fleas there. And they are on Ivermectin.

 

[jorats]

Ivermectin is good for all buggies.