Why are my rabbits fighting so violently?????

Question

i have 4 rabbits and there is mom dad and two 1 year old baby's they baby's lives together for 1 year and all the soddon the babys are fighting and ripping each others fur out we moved one to another cage but i want them to stop do u know why they are fighting and how to stop it help me please!!!

Answer 1

they are probably starting puberty, or they are fighting for domanance. take them out.

Answer 2

You can not keep rabbits together unless they are spayed and neutered.  When they reach a certain age, they begin to fight (as you are experiencing).  Have them all altered, wait a month or so, then reintroduce them slowly and carefully using the tips found here: http://www.rabbit.org/behavior/index.htm...

Answer 3

I've previous experience too. I also happens to have 4 pet rabbits - rabbit dad, rabbit mom and 2 male rabbits. Have all of them neutered/spayed. They are behaving aggressively because of hormone-related changes in their body as they are now becoming young adults. Even after spaying/neutering, my rabbit dad still occasionally fight with one of the male rabbit. We avoided further fighting by promoting the rabbit dad to "top rabbit", ie. he has more priority over the other rabbits. Seemed to work!

Answer 4

Male rabbits do fight when there is a female nearby, they might consider your family members a possible mate and fight each other. Its all part of the rabbit's maturity. You can neuter them to stop them from fighting, or keep them seperate.

Answer 5

Please SEPARATE all four rabbits IMMEDIATELY into separate cages!!!

There are so many things wrong with this current living situation. Hopefully I can cover them all:

1. An unspayed and unneutered buck and doe CANNOT live together. When the pair reaches sexual maturity, the buck will mount the doe continuously, trying to breed. If you have a dominant doe, this can end in serious injury, or even death to the buck. Does get very aggressive when a buck is too over-eager, and I've heard of several bucks getting their "private parts" torn and bitten off by a doe.

2. IF the buck lives to see the babies, the buck does not have the motherly instinct of the doe, and will often kill the litter. The buck should NEVER be kept in the same cage as the doe and the litter.

3. As you have seen, when the babies reach maturity, if any are bucks, they will start fighting. These fights are violent and are for the purpose of gaining dominance over the herd. In the wild, one buck will service many does. So as seen in domestic rabbits as well, if any other buck tries to interfere, he will fight them off. The worst thing about this situation is that since they are confined in a cage, none of them can run away. If you let this continue, rabbits WILL be killed. Again, please separate ALL the rabbits IMMEDIATELY.

4. These comments were not even hitting on the biggest problem- overbreeding. Allowing your rabbits to constantly reproduce is irresponsible and contributes to the overpopulation of rabbits. There are too many mixed breed rabbits already in shelters because too many people have let their rabbits breed with no knowledge of what they're contributing to. The ideal situation would be to have your rabbits spayed and neutered, but if you won't, at least keep them separated.

5. By letting these rabbits inbreed for generations upon generations, you will have even more problems than the ones previously mentioned. There ARE ways to linebreed (or inbreed) responsibly that will bring out strong genetic traits to help the herd. But this is a case of irresponsibly inbreeding random rabbits, which will cause genetic defects, genetic weaknesses, and weakened immune systems.

So again, for all these reasons, please separate your rabbits immediately. If you want to continue keeping rabbits as pets, I suggest doing a lot more research on the responsible care and housing of rabbits as pets.

I wish you the best of luck with your rabbits.