Rabbit killing chickens?

ravencreek

Songster
11 Years
Nov 10, 2008
550
4
141
Benton TN
Ok I may have one of the strangest chicken murders ever. My sons rabbit who runs loose on our property but is still very tame and lovable dug into my chicken pen and I think killed 2 of my white leg horn hens. I found them dead this morning with bloody rumps that had been chewed by something as well as their wing tips and feet. Well I first thought it was a wild animal of some sort but out of the coop hops Jingles the rabbit. Could he have killed them? And why? He gets along well with them when they are out during the day in the yard. He does chase and try to mate them sometimes but is never aggressive with them. Any ideas?
 
Actually this does not surprise me. We for a short time kept a tame white rabbit in our run. At the same time I had a hatch of Pekins and Cayugas hatch out. The rabbit killed all but two of the ducklings within the first few days they were alive. IT actually chewed their beaks off while they were alive yet and either we had to put them down or they died from shock ect. A am guessing that a chicken would not be much harder for a rabbit to kill.
 
Sounds like a bunny to me. I'm guessing he is not neutered. Buns can be nasty things when their hormones start going When we had the bunny spay/neuter clinics some of the bucks would try to attack our faces
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the owners always said how sweet they were 90% of the time.
 
Thats the strange part. He is neutered. Yet he still tries to mount everything. He is around 15 months old and was fixed not long after we got him at 9 weeks. So I don't understand why he still has the behavior. I have never had chickens and a rabbit at the same time so I never thought something like this could happen. I hope he doesn't decide its a game and continue to dig into my other pens and kill again. I may be rehoming a rabbit!
 
Quote:
Rather than rehome him why not put him in a rabbit hutch?
rabits left to run around free contract all sorts of parasites not to forget to mention easy pick off by preditors.

Mounting is normal for even altered rabbits, has nothing to do with hormones but everything to do with dominance.
Female rabbits will mount another male or female to prove who is top rabbit.
 
a rabbit cant catch a chicken for one because they would fly away and for 2 the rabbit could have chewed on them after they were dead and you just may have found him there with the chickens
 
What Gypsy said -- the mounting is about dominance, not sex.

Chasing and mounting ARE aggressive behaviors -- and chickens are really weird about letting other animals do terrible things to them, while the chickens are roosting.

Sorry for your losses! Don't rehome the bunny -- just reinforce the chicken pen so he can't dig into it!
 
Once again I have learned something new from BYC. I was going to get a bunny and house him in a patch next to the chickens, separated by a redwood fence. But now I am rethinking that idea.
I'm sorry for your loss. We always think of bunnies as sweet little things, and the bad bunny stories are just a rarity...but I'm starting to think we maybe they are mean little creatures that are just sometimes nice.
 

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