Bonding A bonded Pair to a New Rabbit

[Deleted User]

Hello!

I own a holland lop (male) and a holland lop- rex mix (female).  They are a bonded pair, it was love at first sight. I adopted a rescue rabbit, a giant flemish mix (female) about 3 months ago.  All rabbits have been litter trained and are fixed.

The problem is the rex female.  She absolutely hates the new Flemish female.  She started marking all over the house.  The two rabbits (lop and rex) lost their freedom to roam the house when this started.   The flemish does not try to cover up the markings; however, both females make a “boundary” line of poop at the entrance of their gated rooms.

So far, we have only tried bonding the two females as the male seems to have no issue with the new rabbit.  During bonding sessions, the flemish will calm down within a couple minutes and relax and kick her feet out.  The rex mix acts terrified like she is about to die.  She will not eat treats and will not move.  On occasion she will run at the flemish  which causes her to grunt and attack in return.  Only one session resulted in an actual fight (if you have seen a real rabbit fight its scary).

We tried bonding the male and female pair with the new Flemish together, but this resulted in the rex marking the lop male (yes she peed on the other rabbit). It also made the Flemish nervous.

Some bonding sessions result in no attacks at all (no lunging, etc). However, it seems the Flemish will always lay down and relax and the rex either appears to be fearing death (total freeze), or just wants to escape the neutral zone. 

Do you think we are wasting our time? Or is there hope? We used to let the rabbits run free and we would like to be able to do that again (without having baby gates all over the house).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! We are currently using the hallway in between the rabbits rooms as the neutral zone.

Thanks!

[MoveDiagonally]

Welcome to BB!

Since your goal is to have all three bonded I would really suggest focusing on group sessions (all three rabbits together). They social dynamic is different in groups and they need to all build relationships with each other for this to work out long term. The way you described the group sessions you’ve tried doesn’t sound bad to me. I would continue along those lines and just keep working with them. From what you’ve written so far it doesn’t sound impossible at all.

I have a bonded quintet. I bonded a single rabbit to my pair making a trio and then bonded my trio to two single rabbits.
Here are my threads/bonding stories if you want to see how I got mine bonded together:
https://binkybunny.com/FORUM/tabid/54/aft/125145/Default.aspx
https://binkybunny.com/FORUM/tabid/54/aft/127407/Default.aspx

[Zombie-Sue]

Actually it sounds to me like it’s going pretty well.

[Author]

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