Unfixed male and female – slow bonding tips for post-fix?

[Sleepy]

Two questions, mostly. We’ve had a female bun for a few months now, unfixed because we were going to wait until she matured and was about 6 months old+timing for care worked out. However, we’ve ended up with a second bun about the same age but he’s also unfixed. We’re getting the male fixed within two weeks but the female still can’t be fixed till late-May.

Currently, the female bun has her pen in kitchen and a run space in the living room while the male bun is downstairs with a big pen (we plan on letting him run in the nearby basement space for his run area). We plan on keeping them upstairs/downstairs until at least 3-5 weeks after his neutering to ensure no bun babies occur and the hormones are out of his system. However, that’d still be a few weeks before the female bun can be spayed and she’d require another few weeks to heal and let hormones die down. 

First question, for when the male bun has a few weeks pot-neutering: if we set up a ‘neutral’ pen beside the living room area that belongs to female bun (which we ideally want two to share, as well as a pen or other space eventually – likely, the female bun’s pen too), would it hurt later bonding if they alternated who’s in the pen or living room area during out time? So one if one bun is in living room area for an hour or 45 min while other is in pen, they switch for  same amount of time. Plus, the living room is typically the female bun’s area so don’t know how well something like this might work.

Second question: because we have to take the long route with these two (thanks to their unfixed status) and because we weren’t able to test compatibility before we ended up with male bun, are there any particular tips for helping the bonding process in this case?

We’re tentatively hopeful since the buns did live together a few months ago before we adopted the female bun and because they seem like they might have compatible personalities but, given how bad some bondings can go, am paranoid we’ll spend months preparing the two only to find out they hate each other and bonding won’t work. Also, while we’ve owned buns before, this is our first time attempting to own two, let alone bond two.

[Azerane]

There are things you can do while they are waiting for surgeries, which includes scent swapping. Swapping toys, food bowls and litter trays etc between their two cages so that they get used to the smell of the other rabbit.

Ideally, you want a completely neutral area when you first introduce them, an area where neither has ever been before. It is good to have shared play space alternating times, but you want the bonding area to be as new as possible. Any time you put one of them in it before them, they’ll be scent marking etc and it will just be a chinning (and possibly poop) war every time you switch them out which I can’t see being a good thing for bonding. Is it possible that after the male is neutered for a couple of weeks that you can let him run around in the living room while the female is in her cage? She won’t like it, but it will help them get used to the sight of each other as well. I suggest only doing that after the male has been neutered as rabbits can mate through cage bars.

Hopefully someone else can chime in with more knowledge, but that is at least how I see the situation.

[Sleepy]

Thanks for the tips! We’ll consider swapping some of their thing once Bleu (male bun) is more settled in.

Unfortunately, Guinness’ (female bun) cage is in the kitchen. Part of why we thought about the pen in living room along with the run area was to get them used to sight of each other+scent share while allowing them both to have access to a good play area we want them both to ideally share. The pen in living room wouldn’t be intended for their main, initial bonding area but for allowing for allowing for alternating play times and letting them see each other. Would it be better to let one bun (probably Bleu) claim the pen more first for out-time before having them alternate? Or would it be better to scratch that idea and just have them have play time separately until they can be introduced in a completely neutral space?

For reference, the idea was to use this sort of setup for a few weeks up to a month before bonding to allow them to get used to each other and for Guinness to have time to recover from her surgery. For initial bonding, we were planning to use a recommended place like the bathtub or an unfamillar place.

If anyone else has any thoughts, it’d be greatly appreciated.

[Author]

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