fighting for dominance?

[cocorabbit]

Coco- 4 month old lionhead female
Mocho- 4 month old hotot female
indoor rabbits
diet: hay 24/7, veggies/salad twice a day, handful of pellets 1 or 2x day.
healthy

Coco and Mocho aren't happy little gal pals anymore. I think they are trying to establish who's boss... Mocho will try to mount Coco from behind, but so far Coco gets on MoCho's head and will hump it, until Mocho throws her off and then they rest for awhile and chase and repeat.

I heard you shouldn't interrupt this, but I've been watching by to make sure no bloody fights.

Should I let them do this? or separate them until I can get them both spayed?
How long will this go on?

it's annoying because the poop poo will fly outta' their tush and sometimes they will urinate on the floor either during these tufts or after (even though both were litter trained fine before). So I'm like running around cleaning up after them... MORE than before... grrrr.
anic:

 

[OneTwoThree]

I'd separate until spayed, you only have a month more to go. After a couple weeks of healing, they should be much easier to bond. And I've heard that altering can undo a bond anyway, so you'd have to go through it twice. Yuck.

 

[cocorabbit]

thanks for advice... i JUST separated them cuz it was getting on my nerves! haha. then i read your advice. perfect.

Fortunately, for me, they were already bonded when I got them. So after their spaying will be my first time to do bonding. *oh boy*:rollseyes

 

[OneTwoThree]

Hopefully you'll get more advice too, sometimes bonding is SUPER easy, and sometimes it really sucks. Best way to go about it is with patience and a little empathy for the little buns who are entering their teenage months. Read as much as you can, the library here has a wealth of information, there's a language of lagomorphs site that is awesome and helps to read the body language of your bunnies, and of course ask away for anything (or use the search, or both) because chances are someone wants to know the same thing or someone just asked the same thing

 

[cocorabbit]

lagomorphs... I did see a site about that, it was interesting. I only browsed it though. Now I will go back and re-read it carefully (with purpose!).

 

[Nancy McClelland]

Definitely need neutering. It won't stop the dominance humping entirely but it did make a major difference with ours.

 

[cocorabbit]

***UPDATE***

Now we are separating the bun buns at night. In the morning and night time they are let out to play and run around for a few hours.

Then back to their home during the day, and for a few days we kept them separate.

Now they seem to be better behaved. So during the day they aren't separated unless I start to see them "going at it" again. Then we put the trouble maker in the cage.

Seems to be working! Will be getting them fixed later though for sure.