bonding- anyone have experience with a tough bonding success story?

[bunbunbinkie]

I have been trying to bond a spayed female rabbit (9mons) to a neutered male rabbit (approximately 12 months) for the past week and a half. I anticipated that the bonding would be a little tougher since my female is pretty bossy and territorial, but since this is my first one I’m looking for a little bit of reassurance from some veteran bunny-bonders. Our last date was on Saturday evening (it’s now Thursday), and it ended with my husband and I intervening after just 10-20 seconds. They began circling and trying to attack each other. Before we got involved we did try turning on the vacuum to distract them (which did not work).They were on neutral territory. 

Since then they have briefly interacted through the exercise pen (although not planned, it was supervised). My female will growl/grumble at him and they will exchange a few nips while pushing their heads together. The last time my female tried boxing him through the pen and I was able to successfully distract her. I take turns exercising them, but their exercise pens are a few feet apart. I have taken efforts to feed them treats and their greens while they are separated by the exercise pen and both of them happily munch away. 

For those of you looking for more details; both bunnies are fixed, are in exercise pens, and the 2 dates we have tried have been on neutral territory. The space we have tried for the dates has been relatively small, and the rescue that I adopted the male bunny with advised me to increase the space and try to “traffic control” so that they don’t actually make direct contact for long since the last two dates haven’t been very successful. I haven’t tried this yet, partly because I;m nervous and partly because things seem to be plugging along for the past few days with the in-between the x-pen rendezvous. 

Any thoughts, tips, words of encouragement, and personal stories are welcomed and appreciated!

[Gina.Jenny]

Some bunnies just wont bond, even a boy-girl bond. Some bonds happen instantly, and some take time and effort.

Just over six months ago I successfully bonded a very bossy girl to a boy bun-date in just four days, but while she nipped his hair a few times the first couple of days, there was no circling or boxing. In my experience of trying to bond two very bossy girls to each other and to other buns, if they are circling during bonding sessions, and boxing and growling through bars, they have taken a dislike to each other and will be very difficult to bond successfully. it maybe that you need to settle for setting them up to live along side but separate. One of my girls currently lives on her own like this and is quite happy with the set up, if lots of binkies is anything to go by. On one side, she has 3 bonded buns, and on the other, two bonded buns, but she won’t bond with any of them.

[LittlePuffyTail]

Check out the Bonding section here at BB under “Bunny Info”. There are links to successfully bonded difficult rabbits.

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