Agressive 16 week old

Hi,

At Easter we returned from holiday to discover my daughters beloved male Lion head had escaped and dissapered. After much sole searching she purchased a female Lionhead some months later, Freya is about 15 weeks old.
The problem is that Freya is sooo agressive and my daughter is terrified of her.
When you open the hutch door she starts to grunt at you, she has bitten Rosi twice and scratched her badly. I have managed to pick her up but she just wee'd everywhere. I just don't know what to do. We have never had this kind of problem before. Our other Rabbit Stu, (male mini lop) is just so laid back in comparison we have just never had these problems before.
Sadly I'm not financially in a position to have her neutered but would welcome any advice, or should I just have her adopted. Rosi has already said she isn't sure she wants to keep her.
thanks

Lesley

It does sound as though shes hormonal and it often happens with does,theyre worse than boys for hormonal behaviour in my experience!

Speying would probably help ...if you are in receipt of council tax benefit the pdsa should be able to help with costs I think.

can't you save a little bit of money each week and then have her neutered when she is 5-6 months old. Phone around your vets to see which is the cheapest in your area. Also spend some time with her every night, let her come in the house for a hour or so every night while your watching tv etc.. sit on the floor with her, she will be nosy and come up to you and give her treats etc so she gains your trust and get used to being around you. It is up to you really, if you want to keep her and work with her to be a better rabbit then you must do all you can, if you cant be bothered and dont want to spend the money then I would give her to someone who will.

any advice on getting her out of the hutch? initially she was a house Rabbit and we kept her inside, she was much better behaved then, this has all started since she went outside for the summer. Should we bring her back in?
We certainly want to persevere and it's not out of the question to save up to have her neutered our vet charges £85.00 does that sound about right or should I phone around????

that sounds pretty good to me, my vet charges £62.09 but I get 10% discount, allot of vets are much higher than that, £100 plus usually so I would say that is a good price. You could always phone around just to see what you are saving. How big is her hutch? If you are worried about getting a bite, wear some gloves. I would bring her back in if you can, is there any chance you could have her be a house bunny??

stu mini lop said:

any advice on getting her out of the hutch? initially she was a house Rabbit and we kept her inside, she was much better behaved then, this has all started since she went outside for the summer. Should we bring her back in?
We certainly want to persevere and it's not out of the question to save up to have her neutered our vet charges £85.00 does that sound about right or should I phone around????

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You could phone a few different vets, but you need to make sure that they are rabbit savy, have spayed/neutered lot's of rabbits. My vet only charges £35 for females and £15 for males, but I'm in London so no good to you I think?

My vet charges £43 :?

My vet charges £48 to spey but they do seem quite cheap in comparison to some.

Does the rabbit come out into a run for exercise or is she in the hutch all the time?

How big her her hutch? does she have a run attached?

She has a hutch run combo, hutch is on top and ladder leads down into Run, not sure of size, our other Rabbit Stu (male) is in his hutch/run next door they can see each other but that's it. Although she isn't interested in him at all...
She spends most of the day just sitting up in the hutch, occasionally digs an enormous whole and then goes back up again..

Please don't give up on this bunny. I think there are a few things you could do to inprove things. I think your bun is just being hormonal and therefore territorial and she is probably bored. I imagine that the hutch is not the recommended 6 foot by 2 foot by 3 foot high with attatched run from what you say. As it sounds like money is tight and you don't seem to have a separate exercise run my suggesttion would be to use your carrier to bring her in to the house for some fun and exercise. Hopefully you have a front opening carrier - pop in some treats and offer the open carrier up to her open hutch door - sooner or later she should hop in then you can carefully bring her to the house for playtime. She really needs to be out of the confines of the hutch for quite a few hours (4 or 5 I would say) a day.

I would shop around for a good, well priced vets and save for a spey - this will really help in the long term.

I would save to make or buy a nice large run to attatch to her hutch so you don't have to bring her indoors everyday for exercise.

When she has more space you can enrich her environment with tubes, tunnels, boxes with holes in, balls, boredom breaker tubes (empty loo roll tubes with a few pellets in, fold in the ends and stab a couple of holes in the sides to let the aroma out) digging boxes, trays of home grown grass for nibbling and digging - in the meantime you can provide some of these - the less messy ones! indoors and the smaller ones in her present hutch.

You may of course decide to try her in the house again which would offer much more opportunity for space to play and human interaction and beg, steal or borrow a large run for fun on the lawn.

She sounds frightened too so I would be careful to speak quietly and softly to her, let her know you are there before you open the hutch or approach her.