Upset thumping

[Brad]

I have two bunnies Rambo (6 month old Holland lop female) and bun a (year old mini Rex male) Rambo is a new addition to the family (3 months or so) I kept them in separate cages and only let them interact when out and supervised switched cages nightly to get them used to each other’s sent etc. about a week ago feed them out of the same bowl and they crunched away happily together (they get there pellets at bed time because it makes it easy to put them away and closed them together in the larger hutch as they have showed no signs of agression towards each other except the occasional lunge over a treat (Rambo is very submissive) everything has gone great and I come in to they cuddled together sometimes.

So tonight I wake up to loud thumping in the middle of the night and both bunnies are acting very skittish. So I decide to separate them in case it was cause by a fight but neither show signs of injury and I didn’t hear any scuffling in the cage before the thumping woke me up. Now bun is in is cage whimpering right before a loud thump pretty steadily. I put a sheet over his cage and he’s is starting to calm down a bit and Rambo is in hiding thumping occasionally but seems to be in respond to his thumps. Again both bunnies seem very afraid.

They typically don’t really care to be touched or picked up a lot but at the moment are fleeing when I try to pick them up or come towards them. They aren’t even reallly responding to the sound of the treat bag which is a sure fire way to get there attention. Both animals are modified. Just wondering what could be wrong.

[Mikey]

Its not normal for rabbits to whimper. What noise was she making? Are you sure it was her?

Are they both spayed/neutered?

[Sirius&Luna]

You can’t just put bunnies in the same hutch together. I know you did hutch swapping but that’s not enough, you need to do monitored bonding sessions, slowly increasing the time. Putting them in one of their hutches without doing that is likely to end in disaster.

I guess they had some sort of disagreement and someone got bitten. Have you checked them both for injuries?

You need to keep them separate for at least a month while they forget their fear of each other, then introduce them in neutral territory, slowly increasing the time they can spend together. Visit the bonding forum for more info on the bonding steps.

[LBJ10]

When Brad stated that both bunnies have been modified, I took that to mean they are spayed/neutered. It sounds like they had been going through a bonding process, if they have not “completed” it. How long have they been living together full time? Did the thumping incident occur shortly after they started living together? Or have they been together for awhile? The reason I ask is because your description of what happened reminds me more of something outside the situation caused one or both the bunnies to freak out. It could have been a scary sound or smell or the presence of a predator. I suppose we should be asking if something has changed in their environment recently. If there were no signs of fighting, then I would want to lean more toward that conclusion. Something scary can set one bunny into a thumping frenzy and the other bunny responds. I’m not sure about the whimpering, as I’m not exactly sure what it was, but it could be that he is upset that they were separated (depending on how bonded they are).

[Author]

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