Nearly 4 month old Sisters suddenly fighting

[Quinn]

Hi! 

I’m new here. Our girls are Texas A&M (TAMU) rabbits from the same litter. They have never been apart and will be 4 months old tomorrow. 

I tried search to find the answer to my question but search is down. I did search google with the BB domain and found several threads, but most were male/female or male/male threads. I couldn’t find any female/female sister issues posted during my limited search results. 

I hope you can help us figure out what’s going on and how to handle it. 

Last week, one of our rabbits began circling and then humping her sister’s face. Biting and kicking. We never saw any aggressive behavior before that morning. They used to groom each other, but we have not seen any grooming the last 2 weeks. We separated them (which was difficult because they were completely engrossed in fighting) last week after the fight. And about an hour later, let them be together again. They were calm and didn’t try to fight. 

Today, the same rabbit (Papaya), bit (attacked from what my child told me) the back of Kumquat’s neck. My child was pretty freaked out by it. We separated them again for about an hour. And when we put them together again, Kumquat went to Papaya and stuck her head under her body. From everything I read, that meant Kumquat wanted Papaya to groom her. But instead Papaya ignored her. 

I assume this is hormonal. They also started marking their territory (pee and poop) everywhere in the last week or two. Previously they were potty trained without issues. Our Vet will not spay them until they are 6 months. So I’m worried we have a looooong, worrisome journey ahead for them. What do we do while we wait until they can be spayed?  How do we handle this? I wasn’t sure if this should be posted under bonding or behavior. So I hope this is in the right category. 

Thanks in advance!!

[Sirius&Luna]

Baby rabbits will get along with any other bunny. But as they turn into teenagers, they get hormonal and start fighting. It doesn’t matter that they’re sisters, they don’t see family units. Unfortunately babies don’t ‘bond’, they just get along until the hormones kick in and ruin everything! We would always recommend separating baby rabbits for this reason, but also because they’re very difficult to correctly sex when they’re young and you could well have a male and female that are mating.

So, from now on you need to keep them totally separate. Separate cages, separate playtime, and there must always be a double set of bars between them so they can’t nip through the cages. Every time they fight, the chance of them bonding in the future gets worse, as rabbits hold grudges and will fight to the death if allowed. If possible, keep them in separate rooms so they can forget each other.

Once they are spayed and recovered from the surgery (2 weeks), move them into the same room (double bars always!) and start swapping them between hutches for a month – this is called prebonding and let’s them get used to each other’s scents in a safe way. It also helps them to stop being territorial. You may need to do it for longer than a month if they still seem angry – when they stop reacting to cage swaps, and start relaxing near each other through the bars you can actually introduce them for the first time in neutral space – we can talk about that nearer the time though.

[Quinn]

Thank you! This is very helpful!

[Author]

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