Despite having succesfully bonded pairs before, I now know how difficult it can be to bond a pair who, at the moment, seems to hate each other.  I am having some luck with “stressing” them.  I put them in a laundry basket and carry them around, and sometimes put them on top of a dryer that’s on.  The constant movement stresses them out (well, it does my New Zealand) and they cuddle together (in theory) for support.  Of course, my Olive (a Holland lop who’s smaller than the New Zealand rabbit, and he’s not even full grown) is more secure, and she often periscopes around/tries to get out of the basket–sigh.  But, they don’t fight (or haven’t any way) when I’ve done this, as opposed to the times I’ve put them on neutral territory and let them have free range.  All goes ok for half a minute and then they start to fight.  

I agree with the laundry stressing technique as having been successful for many members who had bonds that took a while.
It’s been about a week now. Any improvement? did you try this method?

Is Hershey actually hurting Joseph when he nips at him? Even though Joseph is scared, you might just have to let Hershey get it out of his system. When I was bonding mine, all Leopold wanted to do was hump Wooly from every angle imaginable. Wooly was obviously upset, but we just had to let Leopold get it out of his system. After that, they were fine.

Posted By LBJ10 on 11/22/2011 09:16 AM
Is Hershey actually hurting Joseph when he nips at him? Even though Joseph is scared, you might just have to let Hershey get it out of his system. When I was bonding mine, all Leopold wanted to do was hump Wooly from every angle imaginable. Wooly was obviously upset, but we just had to let Leopold get it out of his system. After that, they were fine.

haha silly rabbits. Poor Wooly too!! <3

this is similar to the laundry basket technique, but you could go for a car ride with the two of them in the back seat (under close supervision just in case) i tried this with my rabbits because Melvin had gotten a little nippy with Whiskey.

It sounds like pretty normal behavior – my female still nips my male and they’ve been bonded for a long time. What I did was shake them around in a laundry basket whenever Hannah would get nippy or humpy. She learned that annoying things happen when she’s nippy, but she doesn’t get to end the bonding session either. After a shake in the basket I could put them back in the tub for a couple minutes of calm and end on a good note.

Just wondering about the laundry basket method… do the buns ever try to jump out?

Not really – since you’ll be shaking it around a bit, they’ll probably just hunker down and wait for it to end. Sometimes one of mine would stand up and look around, so I would just lightly push their heads back down and pet them so they didn’t get any ideas about jumping, but I doubt they would’ve have. I found it easiest to sit on a chair or the edge of the bathtub and bounce it on my knees – it saved my arms doing the work and left me a free hand to make sure they didn’t go anywhere.

Hi – I just wanted to see if you have another update on hershey and jo. Your bunnies sound a lot like mine! Hope it is going well!

I would suggest smeared banana on the head of the rabbit that likely is demanding to be groomed. This worked well for my boys because Chubs was tricked into believing he was being groomed and Comet got a tasty treat and didn’t get nipped at. lol I still have to do this every once in a while (and they’ve been bonded for about 2 years) because Comet just doesn’t groom very often and Chubs occasionally gets mad at him and gets feisty. This trick always seems to calm him down again. It was a needed tool for bonding these two!