Weird Rabbit Behaviour

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shehryar_37

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I bought two rabbits(one male and one female) who are about 1.5 months old. I wanted to place them in the same cage as my other two rabbits, who are also a pair and about 7-8 months old. After I placed them together, one of the bigger rabbits sat on the smaller one and I suppose he tried to strangle him! Hence I kept them away from each other. Today, I let all of them play in the garden but one of the bigger rabbits ran behind the smaller ones and once got a hold of them he pulled out their hair while its partner tried to stop it. What should I do and is there any reason for this behavior?
 
Seperate them NOW.

Do not put the new ones with your previous rabbits.

The 2 new ones should be kept away from each other as well until they are both spayed and neutered.

You cant just toss a couple rabbits together and hope they get along. It doesnt work that way.
Bonding rabbits can be a long process.
 
Watermelons is right, rabbits don't just get along. The two you have bought get along now because they are still babies, they always get along until their hormones start to kick in from 10 weeks of age. When you will need to separate them or they will start breeding and likely fighting.

You current rabbit may have been mounting one of the new rabbits, this is a dominance behaviour. It sounds like it was pretty serious though and they should definitely remain separated or there could be very serious fights with serious injuries or even death. Rabbits are very territorial.

If you want to put them all together, you will need to make sure you current rabbits are spayed and neutered (you didn't mention if they were) and then spay and neuter the two rabbits you just got. Then a month after surgery you can start a very slow bonding process, introducing rabbits on neutral ground (where none of them have been before) and having very short (5 minute) 'dates'. It's best to read up on the process as it can be quite involved.

Even if you do have all of your rabbits spayed and neutered, it is not a guarantee that you will be able to bond them. Some rabbits just don't get along with other rabbits. So you also need to be prepared to house them separately for the rest of their lives too if that's the case.

The following are just a selection of websites that provide some information about bonding, the different processes you can use and what to expect.
http://rabbit.org/tag/bonding/
http://www.binkybunny.com/BUNNYINFO/tabid/53/CategoryID/9/PID/940/Default.aspx
http://rabbitsindoors.weebly.com/bonding-bunnies.html
http://www.rabbitnetwork.org/articles/bond.shtml
http://cottontails-rescue.org.uk/information/bonding-bunnies/
 

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