Rabbit has become aggressive

[Peri and Poe]

Hi everyone, I’m new here so i’m not sure if this needs to go in the bonding section but i’ve been having problems with my rabbit Peri.

Just a little background:

We’ve had Peri since she was 9 weeks old and spayed her at 5months. It’s been about 1 and a half years and she has been the most sweetest and friendliest rabbit during that time. Because of her sweet nature and the fact that we thought she gets lonely when we go out of the house, we thought to get her a friend.

We got a baby male rabbit Poe (he is now 4 month old). We knew we couldn’t put him in immediately with her because of his size but also because we wanted to neuter him first so we didn’t expect her to immediately like him or anything.

We put him in a seperate cage but also in the same room so she could see him and get used to his scent. The first time she saw him she seemed upset (she started ignoring us or hiding in her hidey house) but after wards she tried to bite him through the cage.

We immediately put his cage on top of hers which seemed to calm her down. We still let her have free run of the room as she seemed to return to normal but gradually her behaviour has started to become worse.

First she has started to charge at me and my sisters. Sometimes this charging begins with her circling you (but i know it’s not friendly/playful) and then she will lunge at you if you try to move away. My sister was trying to clean Poe’s cage (on top of hers) and i don’t know my sister must have bent down to pick something off the floor and she must have seen Poe or something, because she went ballistic and lunged at my sister-she bit her so hard she drew blood.

Now she lunges a lot (once when i was trying to clean her cage, also when i stopped petting her). She is also more prone to biting.

We’ve had to cage her because we can’t trust her anymore when she’s out. I feel really sad because she was so sweet before and would never bite now her behaviour scares me a little. I don’t know why she is behaving like this and what i should do.

If anybody can offer any advice for this i would be really grateful

[MoveDiagonally]

Hello and welcome!

Letting bunnies get used to each others scents before bonding is very common and good advice however for certain bunnies it will actually increase aggressive behaviors. Instead of getting used to the other bunny and their smells/sounds they feel “invaded”. My advice would be to keep them in completely separate spaces and in a week or so try introducing them in a completely neutral area. A short initial introduction can give you a good gauge on how difficult it will be to bond your two bunnies. From there you can decide how you want to move forward.

Hopefully removing him from her area will also calm down her other behaviors.

[Peri and Poe]

Sorry i didn’t reply sooner-Thanks for the advice.

Since Poe is getting neutered this week, we’ve decided to just keep him in the room for a couple more days.

Hopefully, after he’s recovered, we can begin the bonding sessions for them.

[Author]

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