Hi – 

I recently (5 days ago – Monday) got a second bunny from a nearby rescue hoping to pair him up with my girl Ella.  Ella has been long spayed and Henry, the new male was neutered about 2 weeks before I got him.  They are staying in pens that are about a foot apart and I’ve been switching which pen they are in each day.  They’ve had 3 “dates” in a neutral location.  

Date 1:  Was Tuesday night, the day after Henry came to live with us.  It went okay.  Ella was mostly passive and Henry was hot to trot.  He was really into the humping and very interested in Ella to a degree that I thought (along with some other signs) that he might still have some hormones raging.  This lasted about 15 minutes and both I and the bunnies were exhausted and breathing hard at the end.  

– Because of the suspicion of raging hormones and because I wanted to just give them a little more time in their side-by-side pens to get used to each other, we took Wednesday off.

Date 2:  Was Thursday night and kind of a disaster – mostly my fault.  Long story short by the time Henry got in the neutral spot he was pretty stressed and so was kind of frozen.  Ella on the hand had gotten her feistiness back and was lunging at his face and trying to bite and every time she did that or even looked like she was going to do this I would shove a dustpan in between them which would understandably piss Ella off and she’d box it and hop away.  I only let this one go about 5-10 minutes.

Date 3: Was tonight, Friday.  I decided that I was being too jumpy and nervous and I resolved to try not to step in unless things really looked like they were escalating.  Again, Ella came out rarin’ to go. Every time they would come nose to nose she would sniff for a couple seconds than go in for bite.  Henry fought back a little this time.  I intervened a little less and only when things looked like they were going to escalate.  At time it looked pretty violent to me but there was no skin broken or blood just some fur pulled out.  After a pretty short while they mostly just sat across the pen from each other.  They weren’t exactly ignoring each other but they weren’t facing off and approaching.  Henry tried approaching a time or two but each time Ella lashed out.  In the end he looked like he was scared to go near her.  I gave them both lots of pets to try and bring the stress level down. The whole session was about 20-30 minutes.  

Sorry for the book! So does this sounds pretty typical?  Anything I can or should do, to encourage Ella not to be so beotchy?  Since I got her I’ve thought she had a pretty feisty personality and she’s definitely and unfortunately a biter.  I was hoping that was just with me because I’m so bad at being a bunny.  I especially want her to chill because she’s a giant French Lop (13 lbs) and Henry is ~8 lbs.    Photos of the two of them because they’re cute.  Ella first then Henry.