Molly attacking Stumpy after living together for 2 years

As the title says, my only female bunny has started attacking my poor bunny Stumpy in the last few days and i wondered if anyone could help me figure out why and how to stop this?

Molly and Stumpy have been living together for around 2 years now. 2 weeks ago they started living with my other pair of bonded bunnies, Errol and Timmy. They have all been getting on brilliantly and apart from an hour or two when the pigs come out to free range and they are shut in their crate, they are out all day and night with free run of the room.

I should mention that Stumpy is unwell-i started a thread in health about him losing weight and having blood tests etc to find out what is wrong with him, so it is even more worrying that she is doing this to him while he is already unwell.

She has not drawn blood or anything like that, but he keeps hiding from her because she keeps chasing him and nipping him. he is a much smaller bunny then the other three so can get into places the others cant. he is also the only one that hops on top of the food boxes so he is spending nearly all his time in these places the last couple of days and he is being very quiet.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how i can try to calm things down between them? Or why this started in the first place? she does sometimes chase the other two but not the way she goes after Stumpy :? If it were the other two she were doing it to i would just put things back to normal and have them in pairs again but it is her bonded partner that she is attacking which is why this is so confusing. as if i wasnt stressed and worried enough, the little madam!

As Stumpy isn't well I would separate them back into their pairs. This sort of thing can be pretty normal when bonding a group, but it sounds as if Stumpy is at the bottom of the 'pecking order' and is not really being integrated. It will most likely be the sorting out of the hierachy that is causing the bullying, so if you separate them back into the pairs (and make sure they are not near each other so you don't get referred aggression), it should settle back down again pretty quickly. You can't really read anything into the fact that it's her original bonded partner she's attacking - putting them into a group totally changes the dynamic.

Stumpy probably isn't at all happy at the moment and that really won't be helping if he's poorly. He would be much better off in his original pair, loved up like he used to be. I would be inclined to wait until he is totally better before attempting to try again.

I bonded my four together and then Santa took a turn for the worse with her snuffles - she lost a lot of weight and started to be bullied by the others (she was 'top bun' during the bonding!) I separated them back into their original pairs and she was instantly much happier and recovered well. I never tried again as they seem happy in their pairs.

Thankyou for the advice. I did actually say to my OH this morning that they are probably sorting out the "rankings" so i guess i was right. Im guessing Molly humping the other two is part of this too?

She hasnt been as bad with him today but obviously i dont want Stumpy being scared ect when he is already unwell. Im guessing the usual bringing them out in a carrier wouldnt do the trick if its about rankings?

The thing is that we didnt actually decide to bond them-they done it themselves! Molly and Stumpy were out free ranging a couple of weeks ago when i was giving out veg and when i opened Timmy and Errols cage Errol hopped out and ran over before i could stop him. he ran straight upto them and just started eating with them :shock: so after a little bit of initial chasing around they all settled down together. i thought that was pretty wild but as they got on so well i decided to keep trying them together and then decided to just let them out all day. until friday evening this was all fine, that was when she first started chasing poor Stumpy around. so they did go a good two weeks together without problem but i guess that doesnt mean anything either lol Bunnys sure are unpredictable! :lol:

poor little stumpy, i hope things improve for him when put back into pairs. It sounds like life has not been dealing the poor guy much luck of late i send him my love