***Dear Admin, I’m not sure whether this link is allowed because I think TanLover14’s blog does sell things BUT the page I’ve linked to is not about that and I think it’s quite valuable.***
The blog
Even better (and much more concise) than my advice, is from the blog of TanLover14 who’s bonded many, many rabbits. I’m posting the link to the trio bonding page, but if you look at the ‘Enjoy this? Check out these similar articles’ at the bottom you’ll see the blog posts as she bonds progressively more rabbits to her warren. It’s best to start at the beginning so you can see how she works out the trial and error through her buns and the groundwork the really good suggestions in the later posts is laid in the earlier bonds.
I thought I’d replied to this ages ago!
Personally, I wouldn’t put the bunnies in water because it’s not good for them. If you have trouble with the bonding sessions it might be difficult to dry them off in a timely manner. Wet + Stressed bunnies = not ideal.
Since the car ride worked well, there’s a few different stress bonds I’ve tried:
– Sit the most difficult two (or all three if they’re smaller) on the toilet seat. Ours is plastic, slippery and the bunnies quickly feel as though they’re losing control near the curved edges and tend to huddle together.
– Use the hoover if they are scared of it. This will make them huddle together. Only our aggressor is afraid of it, so I used it in short bursts to classically condition the behaviour out of him. He gradually decreased.
– If I had a box tall enough to keep them in, I would drag them about in it or put them on a washing machine.
Other:
– We started out with stroking their heads together with an oven glove. Hold them together less and less as they get more relaxed with staying together. We allowed the scared bunny to walk around the place while aggressive bunny was being stroked. This helped him become less afraid of Charlie. (That said, we haven’t done this in a while and Albus is becoming more and more afraid of Charlie again.
– If you do banana smeared on heads, do one bunny at a time. You may find the bunny who most wants to be dominant refuses to lick, but with banana on all three heads I found them sparing to be the licker. It was quite amusing but a little ridiculous.
My thread is a bit wordy, but it does go through what I did with them more or less step-by-step.
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