Like a skunk??

[Deleted User]

Okay, so some may have seen my previous posts on here about my two boys and the troubles with bonding etc. Anyway they are still in separate housing and I have tried no more bonding sessions since the last mishap. I’m trying to pluck up the courage to do so whilst doing as much behaviour observing as I can. For several weeks I have done swaps of toys, blankets and litter boxes, even saving a handful of each bunnies poops to put back in the litter boxes that I’ve swapped. This has been working out fine. There is never aggression through the bars (about 6 inch gap between). after the swaps both bunnies do the chin rubbing and investigating and then carry on as normal. So I decided last week that instead of the item swap I would actually swap the rabbits from one cage to the other as I feel they were getting too comfortable with having their own space.

Well, the first time I did this I had to laugh. Rick was quite happy with the swap as he found a left over piece of romaine in daryls cage. But Daryl was not a happy bunny he decided he would tip his toy box over and try to flip his litter box. Also in daryls cage there is a full panel of willow edging attached that’s for chewing (rick demolished his pretty quickly about a week ago) , well rick was rather happy to get at the willow that was in daryls cage and Daryl just sat sulking and watching rick chewing this the whole evening. Daryl is always very tidy and keeps his hay in his litter box whereas rick absolutely trashes the place. So I think this bothers Daryl to see ‘his’ home being messed up haha. They do settle down as normal again after a few hours of being swapped, once they realise the other isn’t actually in the cage too.

They stayed like this a week, with a mid week item swap. Then I swapped the bunnies back to their original area and this was fine. After another week I switched them again, which was yesterday. So this is where I noticed a funny smell as soon as I did the bunny switch. The only way I can describe it is like a stink cloud. A really pungent smell in the air in just a small area. It reminded me of how skunks emit a smell as a defence mechanism? So I just wondered if this was something that rabbits do. I wouldn’t say it smells of urine and I’ve never seen my boys spray or anything (they are neutered) and they never smell and I’ve never smelt either of them have gas either. They sometimes have the odd dribble accidentally out of the litter box and I’ve never even noticed that being smelly. So i just thought this smell was very odd. Any thoughts?

[vanessa]

It sounds like their scent glands. Mine don’t use their scent glands that violently… Perhaps someone else has experience with this?

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