Wer’re brand new to bunnies. We foster and volunteer for a guinea pig rescue and thought it would be fun to foster a bunny, well of course we fell in love with him. He’s about 6, a big Beveren neutered male who had just lost his companion about 2-3 weeks prior. We knew we’d have to have two so we took him back and intro’d him with a 6 year old female (small, white with pink ears -not sure of her breed) she had also just lost her companion. We put them together and she appeared to snuggle against him and he tried to groom her. We thought we had success so we stopped there and took her home. We were instructed to split his cage in half (4’x4′) and have them live next to each other while we go through the bonding process. We were told to put them in a basket twice a day and pet them and try to get them familiar with eachother. On the third day we started alternating the side of the cage they went back to so they’d be sharing space and litter boxes. On day 5 we put them in a neutral room (laundry room) and gave them veggies. They started fighting a little and he mounted her a little. Nothing too bad. We put them back in their seperate cage sides and tried again the next day. The next day we let them roam the living room and they started fighting. He really wants to be near her, he tries putting his head down for her but she seems to hate him. Now he’s mad and hates her too. He’s getting frustrated because he doesn’t understand why he can’t roam free like he used to but if we let him out and not her we feel bad. If we let her out and not him he gets mad. If we let them both out, instant fight. 

When can I call this a failure? As bad as this sounds, we adopted him and only want a second bunny as a companion for him. If they aren’t going to get along we’ve defeated that purpose. I would like to try another of the bunnies from the rescue, probably one more his size. Is that awful?? I feel really bad about it but it’s just not working and we’re all (including them) suffering. 

Any advice?