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Please help - warring rabbits

dawnieb

Warren Scout
I have 2 male neutered buns who are about 1 1/2 now. They have always been together and although I was nervous that they may not awlays get on they have always seemed very happy together. They sleep next to each other and spend hours grooming each other. There has always been an established relationship that one of them is the dominant one and the other more submissive and this seemed to suit them fine.

6 months ago I moved house and the boys became house rabbits. They seemed to happy to be inside and binky EVERYWHERE and I thought it was the best thing that I had ever done.

Magnus (who has always been much shyer then his brother) has grown in confidence and will now come and sit on my knee just like his brother.

However, last nigth something awful happened. They were particicually excitable and there more binkys than I had ever seen. but then one of them landed on the other ones head and they just started scraping. There was quite a bit of fur pulling before I managed to seperate them. I have checked them both over and they don't seem to have injured each other but there was ALOT of fur everywhere. They both appeared very shaken up and sat seperatly for quite a while with Lucius retreating to the cage. after that he wouldn't let Magnus go into the cage and was being extremely terriotoral, assuming the "fight" pose everytime he came near.

I decided to seperate them and they slept apart last night because i was too worried about leaving them together.

I attempted to reintroduce them this morning but as soon as they saw each other they strated fighting again, more fur pulling etc.

I thought I would attempt putting them together agin tonight (neutral territory etc) but I am really worried that this could be the end of their relaitonship.

has anyone got any advice? I know so many people say you can't keep even neutred males together but until now I have never had any problem.

The sad reality, which breaks my heart to type this, is that if I cannot put them back together I may have to rehome one of them. I simpy do not have the space to have them seperate and I would also hate them to be lonely.

Sorry for rambling on, I just thought as much detial as possible was best.

thanks

Dawn (a very worried bunny mum)
 
Neutered boys can often live together without any problems. I am assuming that these are both neutered, if they are not then they will need neutering ASAP and before they are reintroduced.

If you are going to reintroduce them it needs to be in a restricted space which is about 4 x 2 foot and in a totally neutral area. I would take them both for a car ride to start with to slightly stress them out and then iommediatly place them in their new neutral area as soon as your return. Then if they fight, using a broom pull one off the other and hold using the broom that rabbit away from the other for a count of 10, then release, keep doing this as long as you need to. Do try and avoid physically separating them.

If you do not have a period of at least 48 hours where you can constantly supervise them leave this rebonding until you have the time. I have found that stopping and starting only delays the process, confuses the rabbits and does not allow adequate time to establish a bond.
 
Thanks for your advice, yes, they are both neutred and have been since about 16 weeks.

I think this is my weekend job then! Fingers crossed. :cry:
 
Update - my funny boys

further to my post last week, I have now spent the weekend re bonding my two boys.

Bascially I spent all weekend sat on my boyfriends sofa with a broom in my hand, even sleeping, well sometimes sleeping, when Lucius was jumping on me. everything now seems fine!

I am still confused as to what happened but I guess everyone has arguments sometimes.

thank you for your advice! :love:
 
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