Humping behaviour

[Alfieshuman]

Just wondering if anyone might be able to give me some advice please. I have two house rabbits, a neutered male and a neutered female. They have been bonded for nearly 3.5 years now (our male is 4 female nearly 5 years).
They live under our stairs in the large cupboard which has been converted for them and they have the run of the hallway even when we aren’t home. When we are home they have access to the dining room and lounge. At the moment they are unable to go outside because the temperature is too low. (In summer months we open the patio doors for them at least a couple of hours a day)
Anyway to get to the point our male rabbit is humping our female rabbit nonstop and she ends up too exhausted to even run away from him. We have had to separate them overnight a couple of times just shutting one in the hallway and one under the stairs so they can still see and smell each other.
We are at a loss as to what to do next. We have no rabbit savvy vets around here to advise us and we don’t have the space to separate them full time.

[Bella Redwine]

I had this issue my my two girls and after about 3 months they just stopped out of nowhere.

[LBJ10]

Bunnies can be very strange sometimes. Even in bonded pairs, spontaneous humping episodes happen. Typically, it’s a dominance issue. One bunny suddenly, for whatever reason, decides they need to reassert their dominance. All sorts of things can bring about feelings of insecurity in their position. Another reason for humping, and I mean obsessive humping, is stress. I’ve experienced this with my boys. Wooly, who is more or less the submissive one, will obsessively hump Leopold when he’s super stressed out about something. The last time was when he heard the internet guys drilling through the brick wall on the outside of the house.

Is there any aggression at all? Fur pulling, biting, etc?

[Author]

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