Bonded but nipping

[Slowebot]

The bunnies are bonded and have been bonded for months. Simba is 8 and Sherlock is 8 months. Both are altered. They live in a pen in my dining room. So every morning before I give them pellets, Sherlock waits by the edge of the pen but Simba just starts nipping his butt, and she will keep doing this until he runs away, and then she will chase him. This eventually stops, there has never been blood shed, but there are tuffs of fur. Lately I’ve been spraying Simba with a bottle when she does this because it makes me upset that she bites him like that. She also does it if I’m petting him. She is typically very stand offish and doesn’t like to be pet, but if I pet Sherlock sometimes she comes and shoves her head under his body and then I pet her for a little bit. If I go back to petting Sherlock though she bites him. Also Sherlock is on antibiotics and when I give him his antibiotics and then put him back in the pen, she bites him. She basically bites him when she thinks he has something she doesn’t, pellets, medicine, pets, whatever. She is persistent and even if I spray her she will oftentimes go right back to nipping him.

They are definitely bonded though! And otherwise they never really fight. They like to spend time apart when I let them have floor time, Sherlock sleeps in the bathroom and Simba sleeps under the futon, but they never fight outside of the pen. Also the pen was never initially Simba’s or Sherlock’s. They had a cage when they were first bonded that I deconstructed and made into a pen in a totally different room so it shouldn’t be a matter of territory. 

Does anyone else have this issue or any insight?

Something I’ve considered is that maybe she’s going blind or something? She is really easily spooked, I mean I can move on the other side of the room to just readjust myself and she will go sprinting away and thumping as loud as she possibly can. Her eyes aren’t particularly discolored though, just typically a little overcast with age, but it didn’t seem to look like she was going blind. She’s just a terribly strange bunny.

[MoveDiagonally]

This can be a really normal behavior for bonded bunnies. One of my bunnies will run around annoying and nipping the butts of the other bunnies when it’s feeding time. Usually it settles down as soon as they get fed. I know a lot of other people with bonded bunnies have experienced similar/the same thing so I think it might be a normal part of some bonded bunnies interactions.

If your bunny doesn’t seem upset about it and it settles down without intervention I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

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