Aggression at feeding time.

*Sigh*. Xena is starting to get so, so bad at feeding times. She is causing havoc and really going for Fiver and Shadowfax. It's been steadily getting worse over the past few months and I am now beginning to really dread feeding times. Shadowfax now runs off and starts thumping when I walk in at feeding time because she knows Xena is going to attack her. Fiver starts racing around and lunging at Xena whenever she comes near him because he's sick of being beaten up. I feel like every day we are on the verge of a huge fight.
At all other times they are 100% happy and relaxed with each other. They all groom, flop next to each other and love each other the rest of the time.

I have no idea what to do other than to completely separate Xena during the feeding time, which isn't going to be very practical. The problem is that it starts literally as soon as I walk in the room at feeding time or get up on a morning. They get fed twice a day and I scatter feed to try and avoid Xena choking because she literally inhales her food. She is the most food orientated bun I have ever come across. She acts completely starving and desperate and the aggression is so that she can get to the food first...problem is that she gets so focused on attacking the other two that she ends up chasing one round and round the room whilst the other scoffs as much as possible.

Anybody else have problems like this and have anything that can help? I feel so sorry for Xena. She was skin and bone when she was found and I suspect she had been kept with lots of other buns and I think "fighting" for her food is just ingrained into her.

I'm sorry, you're already doing what I would suggest with the scatter feeding. Bumping up in case anyone can help :thumb:

Zoobec said:

I'm sorry, you're already doing what I would suggest with the scatter feeding. Bumping up in case anyone can help :thumb:

Click to expand...

Thanx Zoobec. I just feel awful for them because it's so stressful. I wonder if I video it people may be able to get a better idea and help me? Or maybe everybody is just too busy with GC? :lol: :lol:

They are currently all snuggled up being VERY cute. :? Rabbits!!!!! :roll:

It's the sort of thing that is difficult to not reward. She starts getting wound up and aggressive so you start feeding quicker so she stops and goes for the food instead of them so she's rewarded for the behaviour.

You need to break the pattern, but it will be tough.

Some options... you could stop feeding pellets completely, if only for a couple of weeks. That tends to be the thing that gets them most excited. Once you've broken the pattern, so your arrival doesn't mean food so no chasing you can then start introducing them back in but with a different routine.

You could try a weekend/when you have time off spending the whole day going in and out, same routine as the feeding but first hint of aggression you leave again. Do it again and again, until again you break the pattern.

If there is someone available, you could try getting them to feed the pellets at a different time and see if that's enough of a break.

Another thing to try would be to teach her a different behaviour. I'd go for a box (two entrances again the mesh - cable tie if necessary to keep it there) when she gets in the box she gets a treat through the mesh. Do that every time you go out so she see's you and heads for the box. It might be enough to refocus her energy.

I can't think of anything to add to Tamsin's suggestions - sounds like it could be a tough one to crack and take quite a bit of time/work.

I imagine you feel sorry for Xena for whatever has happened to her to make her act like that, and for the other too for having to go through that every time. So stressful. I'll come back if I have any bright ideas.

I have a purple Kong Cat Treat Ball (about £3/£4) for two of my buns. It dispenses the dry mix as they nudge the ball. Just wondered whether associating the (moving) ball with the food might give her something to mentally and physically focus on other than attacking the others? Good luck :wave:

Thank you Tamsin. Those are very good suggestions but I do go in and out of the room all day, feeding hay and making sure they are all ok. You are very right about rewarding her. Feeding time is basically me rushing to get food on the floor before she beats the **** out of the other two. :shock: Even then she will really go for Shadowfax if she comes near, I think mainly because she will actually run away whereas Fiver will stand his ground.

If I change their routine, she will attack the other two as soon as she hears/sees me reach into their tub of food so I don't think that will work, although it may stop the aggression beforehand. At about 10-11pm I will hear a lot of noise coming from my room, running, thumping and banging, which I think is Xena chasing the other two because she knows it's feeding time. I usually feed them between 10 and 12 depending on what I'm doing, if I'm at work the next day etc.

I wonder if the box thing will work. I have trained Fiver to jump on the windowsill to get his joint support biscuit so that Xena doesn't steal it off him. He is a very clever bun, though and picks things up extremely quickly. I thought about separating her completely when feeding but I have no cage or anything to put her in. I have the carrier but she hates that and I doubt she will go in to get fed...also how to do it without all 3 getting in? :?

About not feeding pellets at all for a while. I know they will probably be fine with that but they all get Protexin pellets because of Xena's previous tummy problems. Do you think it'll be ok to stop these? I don't suppose I'll have to supplement their diet if stopping the pellets is only temporary? Just with it being so late in the year the forage is not very good quality and most of it is dying off now. They don't get veg or fruit because poor Xena can't handle it. They get Ings hay which has natural forage in it so hopefully this will do them good.

Why do I always end up with the difficult problems? :roll:

BlueBellBelle said:

I have a purple Kong Cat Treat Ball (about £3/£4) for two of my buns. It dispenses the dry mix as they nudge the ball. Just wondered whether associating the (moving) ball with the food might give her something to mentally and physically focus on other than attacking the others? Good luck :wave:

Click to expand...

That's actually not a bad idea. I have a puzzle ball that I give them now and again but I find that they end up getting it stuck somewhere or one of them simply hops after the one pushing it and eats everything that falls out. :lol:

Maybe if I get them one each? Hmm. something to think about. :thumb:

No suggestions but the very very best of luck xxxxx

Vegan_Bunny said:

That's actually not a bad idea. I have a puzzle ball that I give them now and again but I find that they end up getting it stuck somewhere or one of them simply hops after the one pushing it and eats everything that falls out. :lol:

Maybe if I get them one each? Hmm. something to think about. :thumb:

Click to expand...

:lol: :lol: I have such a good mental image now! Yes perhaps a ball each :thumb:

If Xena hates the carrier and Fiver will happily jump on the windowsill then before you even touch the food (especially as the sound is a stimulus) maybe you could put Shadowfax in the carrier? So that she would be safely out of Xena's way (along with Fiver on the windowsill) when you then bring the food.

Xena might happily go in the carrier though if she learns to associate it with her food? Maybe you could use something like a few C&C panels to separate them briefly and then bring the food?

My 12 love their dry mix so much that I'm actually afraid to run out of dry mix... :shock: :lol:

What an intelligent boy Fiver is!

It's probably one of those things where you might have to try a few options and see what works for your bunnies/setup.

If you pop in out all day but reaching for the tub is the trigger, try taking the tub out of their space so she can't see it and having the food in your pocket (or a treat ball) ready instead. If it doesn't trigger the aggression, you could then feed a few pellets sometimes (not always) when you go in, so they still get their ration but it's spread over the day. Feeding in different ways, a ball, in boxes, sneaking a few into the hay etc. might be enough to not form a pattern she can predict.

She's obviously fairly smart as she'd predicting your behaviour based on your previous actions, so I think you could train her. The idea with the box is she's 'confined' to that space waiting so the others aren't being chased (they are probably smart enough to learn not to stick their nose in). The rule is she only gets pellets whilst in the box, but they can have theirs out of the box so they don't have the same desire to be in it.

When Scamp was a youngster my dad got him to jump in his washing up bowl before giving him a treat, so every time he saw my dad instead of running to say hi or to where the treats were, he'd run to bowl. That's the sort of thing you are aiming for - giving her a behaviour to do that gets the foods, but one that's more appropriate. It could be hope in a box, on a bow, in a bowl etc. just a behaviour you'd be happy to reward.

They'd be fine on hay/forage for a couple of weeks. I haven't used that brand before. Do you think there is something in there specifically helping her, or it's just they don't have the same ingredients as other brands that cause problems?

The Protexin are pro fibre/pro biotic pellets that just help to support her. Although I found the trigger for her dicky tum (readigrass) and she seems to be fine. I've been giving them the pellets since, though, because they do have problems with fur in their poo and figured it would help with that. I think stopping the pellets might be something to do for now until I get some treat balls. If that doesn't work, then I will try to teach her to go in a box/carrier to be fed. Feeding during the day now and again would be a good idea. When I feed them a few pellets to check they are all eating or to coax them out from under the bed there is rarely any aggression from Xena. I will see what works and what doesn't.

Thank you. You have all given me a lot of really good options. :thumb: Fingers crossed I'll find something that works!

Let us know how you get on/what works/doesn't

Today the two puzzle balls came so now they have one each. They have not had any pellets for about a week and most of the aggression has tapered off. Xena is still chasing Shadowfax and Fiver when I'm feeding hay but not as badly as before.

I filled their balls up with some pellets and Xena didn't even react when she heard me scooping the food :shock: She was stuffing her face with hay at the time. :lol: I gave them the balls and it took Xena a little while to notice them and then they chased them round. I worried they might fight over them but they seemed fine. Hoping this is the solution to the problem. :thumb:

Shadowfax doesn't seem to fully understand the puzzle ball. She is the one who usually follows the other two picking up the food that they miss. :lol: I'm hoping that if she has one of her own that she will actually chase it about. The only issue is the balls getting stuck in places. I think I'll just have to keep checking them; I plan on leaving them with the balls for half an hour and then taking them away because they chewed their old one. :roll:

I'll update again to let you all know how Xena is doing further down the line.

That's really good to hear, I'm impressed that she ignored you getting the pellets after only a week! Hopefully things will continue to improve. I think some buns take a bit to work out how to operate the balls, but they get faster at it in the end. They do manage to get them in some weird places - watch out for water bowls :lol:

Tamsin said:

That's really good to hear, I'm impressed that she ignored you getting the pellets after only a week! Hopefully things will continue to improve. I think some buns take a bit to work out how to operate the balls, but they get faster at it in the end. They do manage to get them in some weird places - watch out for water bowls :lol:

Click to expand...

Oh yes. I've found them in there before. I have a cardboard tube in the room for them to chew and I was looking all over the place for their old ball and it was wedged inside the tube. :lol: :roll: Fortunately Fiver and Xena are pretty good at getting them out of stuck places because they pick them up and throw them.

I don't know if it was just a fluke that Xena didn't react to the food tub..but we will find out. Problem I have is that I don't have anywhere else but my room to store their food. :? I'm going to try and go to the food tub whenever I walk in so that she stops associating the noise of the tub with food. I'm also not going to feed them at the same time every day. It'll be difficult because it's ingrained into my routine and I like routines. :lol: I've had to stop myself a few times as I've reached into the tub to feed them.

Just another update. Xena and the others have finally dissasociated the sound of me rummaging in the pellet tub to feeding time so I fill the treat balls up without them trying to kill each other. :lol: She has, however, started to lunge and chase the other two when I'm topping their hay up. *Mega facepalm* Obviously this is going to be much more difficult to stop if it starts to get as bad as feeding pellets since I can't just stop hay. I also top it up at random times so they don't actually know when they get hay. I may have to stop them associating me going to the hay box to them getting hay. Just to make things even more difficult!

Overall the treat balls are working really well and overall things are a lot calmer. I don't have the chasing starting at 10pm or 8am, although I do still find poor Shadowfax fluff where Xena has told her off for something or other. :roll:
I have so far found the treat balls in their water bowls, lodged in that cardboard tube, stuck under my wardrobe and drawers and wedged under the radiator. Sometimes I can't even find the damn things until one of the buns remembers where they hid it at 3am and starts throwing it about or rolling it around on my laminate flooring. :roll::lol:

Thank you everybody for the ideas, especially Tamsin. :thumb:

:lol: they do like to keep you on your toes

I'm glad things have been so much better with the pellets and you are having so much fun playing hunt the treatball. Scamp manage to get his impaled on a stick inside his sleeping box yesterday, I have no idea how he managed it.

Hopefully you can nip the hay issue in the bud before it becomes too much of an issue, it's a bit tough to smuggle in multi bunnies worth of hay without them noticing. It might be adjust the amount so you feed a day and half and top up two places alternately or several times a day or something like that would work. I think you'll have to experiment and see how fast they catch on.

Tamsin said:

:lol: they do like to keep you on your toes

I'm glad things have been so much better with the pellets and you are having so much fun playing hunt the treatball. Scamp manage to get his impaled on a stick inside his sleeping box yesterday, I have no idea how he managed it.

Hopefully you can nip the hay issue in the bud before it becomes too much of an issue, it's a bit tough to smuggle in multi bunnies worth of hay without them noticing. It might be adjust the amount so you feed a day and half and top up two places alternately or several times a day or something like that would work. I think you'll have to experiment and see how fast they catch on.

Click to expand...

:lol: Scamp the impaler!

Yes, I shall have an experiment with the hay. Rather surprised that the treat ball worked so well to be honest! :shock: I feel like it was TOO easy. I feel they are plotting against me.

To be honest, what I did with my 2 where the girl is very aggressive while she's waiting for her breakfast is a) I make sure they ALWAYS have some food, even if it means overfeeding. b) I distract them both separately with a treat while I'm bringing in the food.