Chasing...

Morning all, we were giving the boys their daily clean earlier, and as usual we moved them into their run/play area.

We noticed that Spencer (Dutch) was chasing Frank (scruff bag) very fast, and every now and then h s just catch him and pull away a bit of fur.

We did stop this as soon as we noticed, and Frank would just hunchup in one corner for a while.

Now, my question is, should we be worried?

The boys are between 15 &17 weeks old, they haven’t been neutered yet because of their ring worm, and hopefully this is now sorted so they can get their jabs and then neutered a week or so later.

They are bonded, and they’ve been together for probably most of their lives, but I know that if hormones are starting to kick in then they’ll start to get territorial etc.

Neither rabbit has any visible injuries, so no cuts/scrapes/bites, and due to the time of year they are both molting, so are losing fur easily just from being stroked etc.

They are back in the hutch, and seem happy with no further problems, and they spend quite a lot of time grooming each other and they’ll cuddle up to watch the world go by etc.

It didn’t seem especially aggressive, but I’m not an expert on rabbit behaviour.

We’re back at the vets tomorrow to have the ringworm checked so will ask them as well.

I also saw my first bunny tantrum. I’ve decided we need to be a bit better with the amount of nuggets they’ve been getting, so give them both a small-medium handful each twice a day in separate bowls. Spencer finished his nuggets so tried to eat some of Franks, Frank didn’t want to share so threw his bowl.

It’s normally frank stealing from Spencer, but Spencer is now the bigger of the two, and I assume is the boss bunny.

If you have seen them chasing then they could progress to fighting unless one is very submissive. The vaccinations have to be spaced out ie Myxi/RHD1 then 2 weeks later RHD2. Then I would wait another 2 weeks before having them neutered. You can't really speed this up if you want to make sure the vacs have taken properly. I hope you are able to go on to having 2 happy boys.

Thanks, I was working of what the vet said when we saw them a couple of weeks ago.

Today is the first time we’ve seen this behaviour, and I was wondering whether it was because they were out of the cage in a “neutral” area, so thought maybe spencer was asserting his dominance and claiming his territory.

Because of the ring worm everything gets cleaned and disinfected so certainly their outside stuff won’t have much of a scent to it.