HELP Bonded Bunny FIGHT?!?!?

[Nicoleondynomite]

 This morning while our two young flemish giant girls were in there cage before we let them out for the day they started fightiing. They have never done this before. ever. The craziest thing is that the less dominate one mouse likes to jump out of the cage and binky on me in my bed until i wake up and cater to him. Even though this is really adorable and its funny to wake up with binkys we dont want her jumping out and running around the house at night. Who knows what shell get into…. So we made a top out of the same wire the cage is made out of… It is longer than the cage but less wide. So there are slits on the side for us to still pet, feed etc. Well this morning mouse must have been so scared of biz (im 99% sure biz is the attacker) he just jumped right out! Poor baby. So now biz is in his cage and mouse is downstairs with us. He isnt injured at all. I do think he is scared though. Usually his favorite spot (really the only spot) is on the back of our couch. She like to sit there with us and definetly prefers that to any other lounge spots. But right now she, well now she is hopping around, but not two seconds ago she was laying in her travel carrer. With her but in and her head out. So the real question is what in the world got into my bunnys?!?!? And how do i deal with this. I swear they were bonded. Cuddling 24/7, grooming eachother, eating together, the whole 9 yards…. SO what do i do?

[Elrohwen]

How old are they? Are they both spayed?

[Nicoleondynomite]

I got them in October of last year. The breeder said the were about 4 or 5 months… So there about 8 or 9 months old. Yes they are both spayed.

[Sarita]

How big is the cage? They probably need a larger space.

Also you may want to take out any toys, hiding places, etc….they could be getting territorial over these things in addition to needing a very large space – have you considered having them free roam?

[Elrohwen]

I agree with Sarita – taking things out of their cage and giving them a bigger space should help.

[Sam and Lady's Human]

What did you end up doing with their space? I remember we were talking about it a while back

[Nicoleondynomite]

it is a big rectangular wire metal cage, with a metal top. I would say it is about 5 by 3, and about 3 1/2 feet tall. It is tall enough that they can stand up on their haunches with their ears totally upright and still not be near touching the top of the cage…. There were no toys or anything in the cage at the time… Usually they have a card board tube of some kind in the cage, but they don’t tend to like toys. Their favorite toy is newspaper, but mostly they just eat it. So I try not to give them to much, other than the occasional ball of wadded up newspaper to destroy into a million little pieces. Mostly they sleep a lot then have a long period of binkys around downstairs… They are as free range as possible. Only in their cage at night when we can’t supervise, and when we are not home. They have not done anything like this before so it was really uncalled for. I would hate for something like this to happen again and result in an injury…. They seem to be fine now. Mouse laid down for awhile and I thought maybe she was scared but then she got up and did tons of binkys all over our couch. Hmmm don’t really know what to make of this. I guess ill just keep a closer watch.Biz (seemed like the attacker) seems to be the dominate one and definitely has a more tense personality than mouse. Mouse has more of a “all i wanna do is eat yummy stuff then binky until I’m tired and fall dead asleep on the couch taking up as much space as possible” attitude. Definitely more lade back. So maybe it was just a dominance thing? Maybe it was like a bun argument?… Now they are all cuddled in there cage for the night. Any other ideas to what might have caused this?

[Sam and Lady's Human]

5X3 is WAY too small for 2 flemish giants, even for just night time, and especially for nighttime + not at home. That’s less space per sqft than necessary for 1 regular sized rabbit, let alone 2 giant breeds. And they aren’t even done growing for another 6 months +. So that alone could definitely cause some tension and pent up energy between the 2 of them.
And they need toys, even if it makes a mess. They need mental stimulation and projects, tunnels, burrows, cardboard boxes, newspaper, toilet paper rolls, etc. Lots of hay, I’m not sure if they have that in there since you said there is nothing in the cage.
The out of cage free roam time is good, but its simply not enough.

[Author]

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