Bonded over a year fighting now

[ibepatience]

I have 3 bunnies and I’ve had them just over a year, we bonded the first two and someone bonded the third for us. They’ve been good up until a wee and a half ago when the boys got in a fight. We broke it up and it happened 3 more times, the final time drew blood so we knew we need to separate them. I’m not sure what caused it, the boys were in their xpen and it was open when it started. They run free when we’re home and are in the xpen when we’re at work. The only thing we can thing led up to it was we had been brushing Beveren daily recently because he’s shedding so bad and it was pissing him off.

Here’s some history on the three: Beveren is about 9 years old and lived his life in the rescue until we adopted him in Jan 2014. He’s very lazy and keeps to himself. Betsy is about 3-4 years old, very active, smart, and a bit destructive. Halo is about 3 and completely head over heals in love with Betsy. They’re all neutered and spayed.

We decided we better not put them back together since the boys act like they hate each other, they are literally fighting through the bars. I bought a second xpen and set Bev up next to Betsy and Halo. Now when I let Bev out to run Halo and Betsy act strange in their cage, Betsy will mount Halo and they run around.

Bev is pretty depressed now, I’m not sure what we should do at this point, I’m pretty frustrated.

[Gina.Jenny]

Poor Bev.

One thought that comes to mind, esp given Bev’s age, is could Halo have sensed something wrong with him and attacked because of that? There could be some underlying illness that is causing both the heavy shedding, and him looking depressed?

[ibepatience]

I thought about that too so I did take him into the rescue where I got him and she checked him out thoroughly and I’m taking him to the vet tomorrow just to be sure.

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