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Help, I don't know what to do

bunnygran

Warren Scout
For the last 6 months we have had Rosie and Jack. They are bonded and have been no trouble at all. Because of this we thought we would get another bonded pair with the aim of getting all 4 of them together eventually. Last Tuesday we got the other pair, two brothers, aged about 6 mths. One of the brothers had only been castrated on that day. The other one had been done previously.

All seemed to be going well. We have the pairs in 2 hutches in the same room and let them out alternately. Rosie and Jack don't seem to be disturbed by the newcomers very much at all, apart from a bit of nose touching and sniffing of the new boys.

The boys seemed a bit lively but seemed to get on well together, but this afternoon I heard a lot of banging and when I went to look they were rolling around on the floor in their house fighting. This went on for quite some time. The bunny who was doing all the attacking was the one who had been neutered for some time and who I thought was pretty laid back. The other bunny is slightly smaller, a bit timid but had been mounting his brother for the first couple of days, so I thought he must be the boss.

I know there is a lot going on for them at the moment, but how do I deal with the fighting between the 2 brothers. At the moment my husband has split them up, but would it be safe to put them back together and has anyone any ideas what might have triggered all this and how to deal with it?

I wonder if I have bit off more than I can chew with trying to bond two pairs, as I have very little experience with rabbits and I know a lot of you have had success with this.

Please any help would really be appreciated.
 
Poor Linda
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I know lots of people on here will be able to give you good advice. I have no experience of this to help you with but I do hope none were hurt
 
I have no experience of this either but like Marlene said, there will be plenty who do. Its just a bit quiet at the moment, hopefully there will be more logging in later
 
sorry to put a dampener on this but its not very often you will get 2 males to live together even if done, having a doe there will probebly make matters worse. I know it can work but not often in my experiencse. val
 
It is possible to get males living together in a group. In the wild they will live in groups with more females than males in a group, and therefore a problem may be that you have only one female. We have found with our lot that if the number of females in the group is reduced for any reason (we had an illness going through the females recently so several were separated from the group) then the males are more likely to fight but as long as there are more females than males the males don't bother wih each other. So one option may be to get more females :)

Otherwise start again with rebondng the brothers, doing it slowly following much of the normal advice given in many other posts. Once dominance has been established and both acceept it they may live happily together again

Claire and the pack (6 bucks and 10 does, soon back to 12 does, living together in the house)
 
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