Bonding Hitchy and Diggy: Session #2 Okay-ish

[HitchcockDT]

I’ve been wanting to attempt to bond my three rabbits together, but bonding my two does has always made me extremely nervous. I’ve been putting it off and putting off, but I’ve decided to bite the bullet and give it a real shot. Here I’ll record my progress, and if anyone has any advice or suggestions, please feel free to comment.

This morning I we had our first session. I placed both my girls in a small laundry basket that we had setup in our kitchen, which is a neutral place for both rabbits. It did not go very well. They immediately began to feel fight, well, more accurately, Diggy would attack Hitchy and since there wasn’t really room to flee, they just kept turning circles. I’d intervene by spraying Diggy with a spray bottle of water. This didn’t seem to do much to deter Diggy. I had to put a barrier between them to separate them. Every time I removed the barrier, Diggy would attack Hitchy. There didn’t seem to be any positive interaction and after 10 minutes I decided to call it finished and put the buns in their respective homes. All in all, I don’t think it went very well.

[Mikey]

Few things to try before putting them together again:
Put their cages next together, about an inch apart so they cant nip but can sniff through the bars. Its a good sign when the bunnies are laying against the bars together; it means theyre relatively comfortable near one another

The second thing i like to recommend is the decoy tactic. Get a smallish fleece rabbit bed or a fleece dog toy for each rabbit. Leave it in their cages for a few weeks/a month. After those few weeks, swap the beds/toys into the other rabbits cage. They will attack it, hump it, bite it, and get mad that its there. But it helps them get used to having the other rabbit literally right there with them. Once they calm down after a few days, remove the toys/beds (unless they like them)

Third thing is, swap the rabbits cages. Put Diggy into Hitchy’s cage, and visa versa. Swap them back and forth every 2 to 3 days for about 2 weeks or until they dont seem to care about being swapped

These are all “prebonding” bonding tactics. Theyre getting used to eachother without actually being face to face without a barrier. It just helps them get used to seeing, smelling, and being near one another in a general setting. After they seem fine with any/all of these tactics is when you should start face to face in the basket bonding

[HitchcockDT]

Thanks Mikey! I really appreciate the advice. I’ll definitely give the decoy and trading cages a go. I actually had them switch locations today.

I have a couple concerns with putting their cages next to one another. 1) Their cages are only a little bit larger than their litterboxes. They’re free-roaming and don’t spend any time in their cages. Hitchy becomes extremely destructive if she’s locked in her pen for any length of time. 2) Diggy actually already has a bond-mate (I’m trying to bond all 3 together) and she has a history of attacking him if Hitchy is in sight (Hitchy lives in my bedroom and the pair lives in the living room).

I should probably start with the switching places and decoys first and then some point down the line, try to put them next to each other? I’ll just build bigger cages somehow while they’ll be living next to each other.

[Mikey]

Is it possible to put their cages next to one another at night, then put them back in their respective free roam areas during the day? During trio bonding (ive got a trio in progress myself), the decoy helped a lot with the attacking between the already bonded pair. Maybe you should give that a try first then, to see how that goes before putting their cages near one another. If you can, can you set up two different pens next to one another for the buns to meet/stay during cage bonding? 

Do note with trio+ bonding, they had to re establish their bunny hierarchy, so the already bonded pair might scuffle a bit to see who is the new top bun

[HitchcockDT]

So, for the second time around I made a couple makeshift cages and placed them in the bathtub. This is the best I could come up with given my living arrangements. I left them in there for about an hour and it seemed to go okay. I think I’ll continue to do this and switch their locations for a while and see how that goes.

Image here: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CfPWQfiWwAEO7cd?format=pjpg&name=large

Sorry, I can’t seem to get the attachments to work.

[Author]

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