Two questions, mostly. We’ve had a female bun for a few months now, unfixed because we were going to wait until she matured and was about 6 months old+timing for care worked out. However, we’ve ended up with a second bun about the same age but he’s also unfixed. We’re getting the male fixed within two weeks but the female still can’t be fixed till late-May.

Currently, the female bun has her pen in kitchen and a run space in the living room while the male bun is downstairs with a big pen (we plan on letting him run in the nearby basement space for his run area). We plan on keeping them upstairs/downstairs until at least 3-5 weeks after his neutering to ensure no bun babies occur and the hormones are out of his system. However, that’d still be a few weeks before the female bun can be spayed and she’d require another few weeks to heal and let hormones die down. 

First question, for when the male bun has a few weeks pot-neutering: if we set up a ‘neutral’ pen beside the living room area that belongs to female bun (which we ideally want two to share, as well as a pen or other space eventually – likely, the female bun’s pen too), would it hurt later bonding if they alternated who’s in the pen or living room area during out time? So one if one bun is in living room area for an hour or 45 min while other is in pen, they switch for  same amount of time. Plus, the living room is typically the female bun’s area so don’t know how well something like this might work.

Second question: because we have to take the long route with these two (thanks to their unfixed status) and because we weren’t able to test compatibility before we ended up with male bun, are there any particular tips for helping the bonding process in this case?

We’re tentatively hopeful since the buns did live together a few months ago before we adopted the female bun and because they seem like they might have compatible personalities but, given how bad some bondings can go, am paranoid we’ll spend months preparing the two only to find out they hate each other and bonding won’t work. Also, while we’ve owned buns before, this is our first time attempting to own two, let alone bond two.