I just brought home my spayed female lop (Turanga) today, two weeks after her surgery, to our resident male lop, Nibbler. They’re in neutral territory and their cages are next to each other, with space so they couldn’t nip or bite each other. I watched a video and eliminated the original large rug I had out, and got a towel instead since we have slippery floors. They had been next to each other for about an hour and a half in their cages and I let them out with some oven mitts on as a precaution.

I think it went quite well! They started off my smelling each others faces. My male displayed the dominant characteristics and mounted Turanga several times. I gently nudged him off when he mounted her head. She didn’t fight him at all and submitted. A couple of times she tried to run off but submitted eventually.

 My questions: Should their cages be open and available to them during each open, supervised visit for when they want to go back in on their own? The only issue I can think of is he didn’t wait for her to come out and hopped right into her cage to assert his dominance. Otherwise, they both came out of their cages and roamed around the small neutral area. Shall I get them both out of their cages and make them unavailable, sort of forcing them to be around each other outside of their comfort zones of their home cage?

I’m anxious to progress with how well it went!