humping problems!

[jennie20]

Hello! I could really do with some advice with my two bunnies, in particular my little 9week old boy. We have 2 9week old mini lops, one male and one female, and since we got them 2 weeks ago theyve been great and we coulde leave them together to play and sleep in the same cage. However that all changed last night! My little boy, Willis, began humping my little girl (lily) and just wouldn’t stop! Im scared that lily could get distressed/pregnant/or turn violent. We have seperated willis away from lily but kept the cages next to each other-is this the right thing to do? There both due for their jabs in just under 2 weeks so will definitely plan on booking Willis in for the snip! Is there anything i can do in the mean time or should i keep them seperated until one is neutured? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated xx

[gingerg]

Hi Jenny, I had the same experience with my 10-week-old Holland Lop sibling pair. There’s really nothing to do but keep them separated as you are doing until they are old enough for neutering/spaying. I kept mine in cages where they could see/smell each other, but couldn’t have sexual contact (since you never know when your girl will be old enough to get pregnant, and a young pregnancy can really harm/scare a doe). 

Your vet is probably going to want them to be around four months or at a certain weight before they can have their surgery, so just hold tight until then. You’ll have to keep them separate for a few weeks afterwards (because their hormones will still rage for up to a month after), but after that you can start bonding them together. I had a really easy experience, I think because they were siblings and because I kept them where they could see each other. They also had their surgery at the same time, so there was no issue of one disappearing and then reappearing smelling ‘different’.

[jennie20]

This is great advice thankyou and really puts my mind at ease. Will continue to seperate them and hopefully have them neutured and spayed soon. Its good to hear that yours bonded well after too as our bunnies are siblings, how did you re-introduce them? Just feel really mean that we can only have one bunny out at a time and theyve perfected the puppy dog eyes!

[JackRabbit]

gingerg — I had to do a double-take to see if I wrote that! Holland lop sibling pair, spay/neuter at the same time, cages kept next to each other! With mine, it was like the bond was never broken. Even in separate cages, they slept as close as possibly, ate hay at the same time, etc. When the humping started, Moshi was persistent and I think Marlee was glad to be in a separate cage where she could still be close to her brother but not deal with the humping!

[gingerg]

jennie, it was a very easy re-introduction, much like JR. I had a x-pen attached to the front of the cages. I re-introduced them by taking them out together in the x-pen and sitting with them. There was a little bit of attempted humping. I stuck my hand between them stop it. It wasn’t that bad– they only took a few supervised visits to stop trying to hump each other, probably because their hormones were dying down (my vet told me to expect it and that a little wasn’t too bad but don’t let it go on). By the time my girl’s hair started growing back over her surgery scar, they were friends again. Now they’re great together. They’re not terribly lovey-dovey, but they sleep tucked up against each other every night and never fight.

[JackRabbit]

We hadn’t heard much about bonding issues at the time, and after a couple weeks to make sure both were healed, we let them out in the play area together and stayed very close in case something started to happen. They were thrilled to be able to touch and groom each other. Due to space issues and preparing to renovate upstairs so they could have a large shared area, we kept them in separate cages for several months afterward and continued putting them together for out-of-cage time. They’ve been living together again for just over a year and don’t like to be out of sight of one another. They’re like velcro bunnies! They have an occasional tiff which starts with Marlee not liking something Moshi has done, then her biting his butt and him ignoring it, then more butt biting, then her trying to hump him, him tossing her off, then mutual grooming. Sometimes he ends up humping her back and showing her who’s boss if she won’t stop trying to hump him and that always ends it and sends them into a grooming frenzy.

[jennie20]

This is all very helpful thankyou everybody! we’ve not had pet rabbits before and i think it came as a bit of a shock when they started humping so early! They still smell and lick each other through the cage so hopefully when we re introduce them they should be fine is the spaying operation more dangerous than the neuturing?

[gingerg]

Jennie, yes, spaying is generally more invasive, so it poses more risk. However, if you’ve got an exotic vet in the area who has experience with rabbits, she should be fine. There’s a list of questions that the House Rabbit Society have put together that are a great resource for you when you’re trying to figure out if the vet has enough experience to do the job (I used it when I was selecting a vet to spay my doe): http://rabbit.org/faq-spaying-and-neutering/

[jennie20]

Thanks super helpful advice! X

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