Luna&Ralph
Member
Hi everyone!
I adopted a bonded pair of boys from the SPCA a week ago, and they are supposedly around a year old. I got them as companions for my almost 2 1/2 year old hairless boy who has been alone for about a month after the passing of his brothers while I tried to find him some friends.
The new boys are still in quarantine, and I will not even begin intros for at least another week because one of the boys just got over a URI from stress and mites that the SPCA treated him for, and he has been sneezing quite a bit of porphyrin since I've had him but it seems to be lessening.
When I cleaned the quarantine cage the other day, I noticed a large spot red on one of the towels that had been in the cage. I thought that it was possibly a large build up of porphyrin from the high stress of the one boy, but I found out today that it was definitely blood. This morning, I saw a fair amount of blood on the shoulder of one of the boys, but he acted completely normally and was in no way distant to his cagemate. I cleaned him up and he immediately went back into the cage to be groomed by his friend.
I am so confused, since this is the second time they've drawn blood from each other (I have not determined who was bleeding the first time and the one who was not bleeding this time is usually quite submissive so it's hard to tell) I'm thinking that I should separate them so they don't do any more damage, but they have such a strong bond and I feel like they need each other for their transition to a new house. There was a decent about of blood splatter in the cage but the wound stopped bleeding quickly and the previous one also must have healed quickly because I could not find anything on them the other day.
Any advice would be much appreciated! I am also terrified that one or both of them will attack my hairless boy because he has even less protection and don't want to even introduce them until I get this sorted out. I don't really want to take either of them back to the SPCA, but I'm afraid that they'll keep hurting each other and I can't afford to neuter either of them right now because I just paid for a culture and sensitivity for my rabbit.
I adopted a bonded pair of boys from the SPCA a week ago, and they are supposedly around a year old. I got them as companions for my almost 2 1/2 year old hairless boy who has been alone for about a month after the passing of his brothers while I tried to find him some friends.
The new boys are still in quarantine, and I will not even begin intros for at least another week because one of the boys just got over a URI from stress and mites that the SPCA treated him for, and he has been sneezing quite a bit of porphyrin since I've had him but it seems to be lessening.
When I cleaned the quarantine cage the other day, I noticed a large spot red on one of the towels that had been in the cage. I thought that it was possibly a large build up of porphyrin from the high stress of the one boy, but I found out today that it was definitely blood. This morning, I saw a fair amount of blood on the shoulder of one of the boys, but he acted completely normally and was in no way distant to his cagemate. I cleaned him up and he immediately went back into the cage to be groomed by his friend.
I am so confused, since this is the second time they've drawn blood from each other (I have not determined who was bleeding the first time and the one who was not bleeding this time is usually quite submissive so it's hard to tell) I'm thinking that I should separate them so they don't do any more damage, but they have such a strong bond and I feel like they need each other for their transition to a new house. There was a decent about of blood splatter in the cage but the wound stopped bleeding quickly and the previous one also must have healed quickly because I could not find anything on them the other day.
Any advice would be much appreciated! I am also terrified that one or both of them will attack my hairless boy because he has even less protection and don't want to even introduce them until I get this sorted out. I don't really want to take either of them back to the SPCA, but I'm afraid that they'll keep hurting each other and I can't afford to neuter either of them right now because I just paid for a culture and sensitivity for my rabbit.