Bonding help

[Nettie]

Hi.

We have a 4 years old neutered male bunny, but since 2 of the 3 people at home works with rotating shifts he is spending a lot of time alone in the house and seems to be a little down.

My parents got a new female bunny to keep him company, she is about 2 months old.

We didn’t know about the hole pre bonding and bonding situation, (yeah, now I know it was a stupid move but what is done is done. ) and to make things worst when we took her out of the cage he was at the porch. She was walking arround the leaving room and binkyng all-over the place,then like a half an hour later he came in and they met, they started smelling  each other  and the was no fighting at all.

After a while he started to try to hump her All the time from the front and back, at the beginning she just sat there and we had to take him off her (hi is very big and heavy and we tought he could hurt her unintentionally.)

Now all he wants to do is chase her around to hump and she always run away.

We live in a 2 storey  house so he always had the first floor for himself (it seems that he is afraid of the stairs and never goes up to the 2nd floor xD).

It breaks my heart to leave her inside a cage for months.

Does anyone have any advice for us.

Thank you

[Asriel and Bombur]

You need to keep them completely separate at all times. She first needs to settle in, she’s probably terrified of just being put in a completely new situation and then being relentlessly chased by an unfriendly bunny. Keep them on separate floors until she’s settled at least a month. Then you can put their cages next to each other and prebond, but do not put them together at all until she has been spayed for 1-2 months.

[Nettie]

My old bunny rarely use his cage, he usually only goes the to eat, he always had the cage open 24h a day and is free to walk the house, in fact we took out the door years ago

[Asriel and Bombur]

You’re going to need neutral territory to bond them in another 5-6 months anyways, so you’re going to need to figure out a solution to keep them completely separate. Whether you get two x-pens or have a baby gate blocking your boy from the stairs and keep him upstairs and her downstairs. Because she obviously needs exercise too (at least 3 hours) so you can’t just confine her to the cage. You could also separate your downstairs between the two of them with NIC grids or an xpen and reinforce it so they can’t get aggressive.

[Nettie]

Can I leave him locked at the porch in the morning and let her out in the leaving room, and lock her in the cage on the evening and let him have the room at night? They will be separated and have equal free time. I can move her to my room upstairs but she won’t have a lot of space to run in there.

[Nettie]

Sorry for the double post, I quoted myself trying to edit the previous post

[Asriel and Bombur]

I’d start with keeping the girl upstairs so she can settle away from your boy. As long as she has room to run around that’s still better than being in her cage. It’ll also help her get used to you and her surroundings without smelling your boy who she now associates with non stop humping.

[Nettie]

I think she’s already got used to me, she is laying down with her legs back when a pet her

[Asriel and Bombur]

It can still take a while, even if they seem really comfortable. They still don’t know your routine and are still uneasy.

[Author]

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