This is my first post here so please excuse me while i waffle on about our bunny bonding progress …

I have a older female and a younger male rabbit, both neutered, which i am trying to bond. Our older female has previous had the full run of the place and we worried that she would get bored on her own at home, so when we saw our newer bun dancing madly at us at the center, we just went with it (silly us – we’ll definately do dates next time). Lets learn a bit about our competitors.

Amelie

Amelie is a 2 year old girl bunny and is perhaps the largest netherland dwarf i have ever seen (not fat, just massive). She’s very affectionate (i.e. demanding of attention) but can be quite skittish on occasion. Amelie had never eaten carrots until she saw the new bunny eat them, and now she can’t get enough. Amelie had one leg shaved by the vet after a suspected abcess and it turns out she has an odd swirly black pattern to her skin (the fur grew back much faster in the swirls than on the rest of her leg).

Batman

Batman, while also having an awesome name, is roughly 10 months old, and is a fearless male bunny of unknown breed. He is quite small, smaller than Amelie (although i am assured that he is NOT a dwarf). Batman does not fear the hover, clapping, loud noises, amelie, the washing machine or the vet, often barely reacting to any of the aforementioned. I had wondered if he was deaf for a bit but he can certainly hear the rustle of a Kale bag from another room. I have never litter trained batman, he has always littered in the right place since we first had him. Batman once successfully untied both sets of my wifes shoelaces (which she had kicked off) and proceeded to run off with one.

We had a few half-hearted attempts at bonding sporadically over a few weeks a while back before amelie went to the vets for her abscess thingy and we had to call it off for a while. We recently picked ourselves up and really went for it, and for the past 2 weeks we have been taking them out of their cages into the kitchen, where a pen is set up, and attempting to bond. We have a smallish flat which is largely open plan, and its mostly laminate flooring, so i put a small mat in the center of the pen – typically with some greens, and there is a certain amount of fighting that i am sure is to do with the slippy foor startling them, but there are no other neutral areas to use (even the bathroom is too small and weirdly shaped). Things were going alright-ish, with Batman showing some interest and Amelie staying well clear. Batman, being fearless, would midlessly approach Amelie (who is giving him her best ‘MY TERRITORY!” look) in a corner and a scuffle would ensue – neither bunny runs or if they do, they seem to run in the same direction. Spray water. Seperate. Resume. fine.

About a week into this things are on the up. The scuffles are less frequent and slightly less vicious and there has been a few nose to nose stareouts, and at the end of each session they are swapped hutches. A noticeable improvement happened after i started dancing in the pen with them – amelie started dancing (steps to this dance are as follows – run through legs to other side of pen, turn, look unimpressed, repeat). She seemed to forget that batman was there, and the amount of nose to nose staring sessions has increased dramatically. And here lies my problem, thats all they are – starouts. Sometimes up to 2 or 3 minutes of nose to nose motionless staring. Stubborness seething through amelies eyes, possible stupidity emminating from batman. This ends either with amelie boxing batman, a scuffle or (if they have already been told off and sprayed a few times) amelie might back off and return to a pen corner. It’s been a week since the standoffs really started, and i’ve not seen any indication of one licking the other.

So, this is where we are… although they are not actively chasing each other, neither one seems to back down when a scuffle happens, and neither one wants to do the licking. i’m going to try the banana trick to get batman to lick amelie (as she is probably the most territorial) but i’m not sure either of them are that fond of bananas. Has anyone got any magic tricks to help them work out whos boss without them fighting? I have been breaking up every minor scuffle, maybe i should be less vigilant to let them work out who’s boss?

Thanks for any help you can offer,

Myk and Hannah