Warring Bunnies

[Speedy Gonzales]

I'm looking for any advice I can get as to how I can get a new rabbit to live happily with our two. Ours live in a large run (5m) quite happily, and we want to take on this abandoned female rabbit but every time ours get within striking distance, they take a chunk out of her.
Any ideas?
Speedy

[Eeyore]

Hi Speedy

Oh dear, poor bunnies. :( I'm no bunny expert but I did used to keep them years ago, and we had a similar problem in that we had 3 bunnies housed together for 2 years, they'd ben together from 6 weeks old, then suddenly they started fighting, and literally ripped bits off each other.

We went to the vets for advice and the first thing they said was to get them all "done", but they did also say that groups of bunnies do not usually live happily together - we tried and tried to re-introduce ours but it never worked and we ended up having them all in separate cages.

Are the bunnies you have also female? We did get told it is more difficult to have same sex rabbits living together, so could this be a problem? Maybe that your 2 rabbits have also formed a group and do not take kindly to taking in a stranger (we had a similar situation a couple of years ago when introducing a third dog to the pack).

My advice would be if you want to keep the bunny, just keep her in a separate hutch. At one time I had 4 bunnies, so a lot of cleaning out granted, but it kept them all happy and kept the vets bill down

Hope you get it sorted :D

[Crazy Dog]

Rabbit pie. :rolleyes:

[Bonkers Mad!!!]

i agree with Eeyore i afraid :sad: i would think it highly unlikely that you'll be able to put them in together. even rabbits that are used to living together can suddenly start fighting and its always best to seperate in those instances. as Eeyore says, it's always harder with same sex animals.

[Crazy Dog]

Serious answer now.

Build a run, for the new rabbit, alongside the old one so they can easily see and smell each other. There'll probably be a bit of aggression. Give them time. If they start to get used to each other and the aggression eases off you can then try putting them in the same run - again there'll probably be a bit of a bun(nie) fight :blink: but let them sort it out for themselves unless they're doing real damage to each other.

Hopefully they'll settle down ok but if not, it's permanently back to seperate runs.

[Speedy Gonzales]

Thank you so much everyone! The two we already have are males and have lived together with only the odd spat for about 5 years, but the new bun is female and so we took advice from various places beforehand, had her spayed, and generally, going by the advice we thought she'd be accepted. The trouble is, one of the males has taken over the female role, which we laugh about, but he nests and digs and is definitely in touch with his feminine side! We think the new bun just rocks the boat and our gay buns don't actually need or want a female in with them! It's a pity, she's really pretty!
Speedy

[Eeyores mam]

You`ve just hit the nail on the head. The 2 bunnies are a unit and will not allow another into that unit so it will have to be separate runs. Yes you can put them next to each other but it would seem you are not going to have a threesome with 2 males that are a family. The vet bills are horrendous for sewing up little bunnies and it is unfair. Much better to have 2 runs

[Omega]

I cannot offer you any advice about rabbits, only make sure when they are in a run together they are of the same sex :whistle:

My step daughter keeps bunnies; she had 2 that were put together, one was her husbands bunny and one was hers. Well all was fine because they were both female :yes: ...................... wrong :nono:

During the winter they are kept indoors, and when she got up one morning to go to work, she looked in on the two bunnies and lo and behold there were a few more now ......... she counted 9 little bundles of fluff then she had to go to work :lol:

Needless to say Hubby's bunny is in a cage of HIS own now comtemplating his actions :hihi:

[Planet 24]

I wonder how wild rabbits always seen to live in colonies, and never fight. hmmm......[/b]

They don't live long enough - they get run over :(

But seriosuly we had bunnies when the kids were small and had the same problem and as eeyores mam says the vet bills were horrendous and its heartbreaking seeing them tear each other to bits over and over again - we ended up with just the one and gave the others to good homes.

I hope you manage to sort something out though :)

[Bonkers Mad!!!]

I wonder how wild rabbits always seen to live in colonies, and never fight. hmmm......[/b]

they keep themselves busy by making love not war, harder to do when there are only three of them :yes: