Rabbits fighting

Question
We have had 2 female rabbits together since they were approx 6 weeks old one is a white dwarf lop eared one called Millie and one is a lion head called toffee.  They have always been OK together since we got them in April 2007 apart from toffee, the lion head, since day one tried to mount millie, the lop eared one all the time to the point were we thought it might be male but the breeder assured us it was female.  In the last few weeks the millie who has grown considerably in size to toffee has started to bully her.  She chases her and pulls out fur and we are concerned for toffee who seems frightened and very submissive running and cowering out of the way, although at times they are OK and there is no problem until I try to pet toffee then it seems to start the bullying.  Now toffee doesn't seem to want to be petted and her ears go back and she grunts when you try to pet her as if she knows it will cause her to be bullied.  I have separated them tonight into different cages and millie is on her own and I have put toffee in with the 2 guinea pigs but this is not ideal. Any ideas.
Jo

Answer
Hi Joanne,

your rabbits are hitting sexual maturity.  You will need to keep them separate until you can have both spayed by a good rabbit vet, and then wait at least a month from the last surgery before attempting to bond them back together.

This is hormonal behavior that has no other solution.

If you don't have a good rabbit vet (not all vets are) go to:

www.rabbit.org/vets/vets.html

and find a House Rabbit Society recommended vet in your area.  If you can't find any, call up local and state rabbit rescues around you and ask who they would go to with a sick or injured rabbit.

You need to have a vet that will give you both post-op antibiotics (like baytril) while she's healing, and also several days worth of pain medicine (ie metacam) so that she will still want to move and eat the first few days.  If she doesn't eat because it's too painful to move, her gut can shut down and she could go into gi stasis and die.

So if the vet doesn't understand how important pain management is to post-op rabbits and won't prescribe any, go to a different vet.

I would recommend going to the House Rabbit Society web site (www.rabbit.org) and looking up the articles they have on 'bonding' rabbits.  Use their search engine on the main page.

Lee