Rabbit biting me hard, almost breaking skin

[BunBun260]

So I talked about this before. I had got a female rabbit in September, who had no human interaction. I was able to get her to trust me a bit more, then in November I took both my rabbits to a boarding place that mistreated both my animals. After that she kept biting me and wanted nothing to do with me. I was able to fix it a bit after two months of trying tricks like food, playing, laying on the floor, and more. Flash forward to today, she back to biting me.

She is currently being bonded with my male rabbit which is getting good, I’m personally finding that the more closer she gets with him, the more she hates me? Maybe it’s just me overthinking that.

I currently have them sharing one big cage that has a divider to keep them separate. It has one gate which is on my male side. So I have to left and pick her out of her cage. She doesn’t enjoy it, but never bites me. This week she has been biting me hard non stop. To the point I have to use treats to distract her. I plan on switching the gate to her side today to avoid picking her up all the time.

Today she was on my lap and I was petting her. She is currently molting so I decided while I was petting her I would look at her skin and fur to make sure it was all looking good. She ended up biting me so hard it almost broke skin. I had shorts on and that is what stopped it from breaking my skin. I left her alone for a few minutes to kinda get it back to being calm and she ended up biting me again.

During bonding sessions she will also bite me hard. She will walk over and just bite me. She will jump up on my bed and just nip me hard, and then run off. She grunts at me a lot too.

Her behavior is getting worse and I’m just concerned. Nothing I do seems to work. I will feed her treats from my hand, play with her with the treat ball, lay/sit on the floor, and more. I know some people have mentioned on the passed that its just from anger from bonding, but should that be getting better as the bonding gets better?

Any tips would be great. I know bunnies will nip lightly sometimes to communicate, but she is nipping me hard.

Side note: she was grooming me two weeks ago, she hasn’t groomed me since. She is spayed but was spayed at a young age. I believed it was at three months old (have a thread about this). She is about 8 months old.

[Doodler]

I am sorry you’re having trouble with her.

It very well could still be the bonding. Even if things are going well it still can be stressful. When I was bonding and close to the end my buck would thump and run from me when I went to get him. He’s not a biter but he still had his own way to tell me he wasn’t thrilled. I was hoping he’d start looking forward to the bonding sessions.

I will say that my buck has become less attached to me ever since being bonded but for something this extreme I wouldn’t be surprised if she is just getting used to everything.

It could also be that she is just getting sassier as she gets older.

[DarthVadar]

It is most likely the bonding. Bonding is very stressful for rabbits. Panda was never really one to bite, just nips and scratches here and there, but during bonding she bit me through the skin every.single.day.

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