Well behaved teenage Flemish buck going rogue! Help!

[hrams]

Background: I have a 10month old Flemish giant buck. He has been neutered since 4 months and had no spraying / marking issues prior to or after. He was 70% liter box trained when loose in the whole house, 100% when in his room (an entire 15×20 spare bedroom all to himself)

December 21st we added a 8week old English lop doe to the family.

She is separated in her own playpen/cage set up in a corner of the bunny room. It was double fenced at first to provide a bit of a buffer in case the big guy got any ideas.. However, all signs point towards a successful kinship between them as they are quite fond of each other! Now down to just the playpen fence and cage sides separating them, and it’s been great!

He started digging in the beginning of December. We went through some litter changes to try to correct it with minimal success. Added a dog box which he won’t even go in, but digging has somewhat subsided in the past two days though.

Yesterday I noticed some pee spots outside of his litter box in his room in random areas. Something he has never done before even when first starting his litter box training. This has escalated to full blown spraying across the entire room tonight! He was laying down and cuddling with me and out of no where lifted his bottom up and projectile sprayed across the room!

I obviously doing something wrong. I fully intend to submerge myself in some further readings on the topic as well but I figured maybe some fellow bunny moms could help!

I’m sad thinking I’ve caused all of this and he’s distressed due to the new addition.. I really hope there is some hope out there for me!

[Muffinluv]

It’s possible he’s trying to mark his territory. Whenever a new animal scent is introduced to the house bunnies often feel the need to reassert their ownership of everything. Eventually (Especially if you manage to bond the two) his jealously over territory should disappear after he becomes accustomed to her smell. At the moment the only thing I would do is remove any pee smells as quickly as possible. As strange as it sounds, perhaps you should try leaving a few of his poops lying around? Only 5 or so little pebbles, but they are less offensive than pee puddles and probably carry his scent enough for him to consider the area ‘marked’. This would only be until he gets used to the other bunny of course, I can see why you wouldn’t want to leave little landmines around

Congrats on the new English lop! I hope my forum mates have some better experienced advice for you. Good luck!

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