Bonding Timothy and Clover (tentative name)

[Suzuko]

I’m a new member here but have lurked for a long time. We have a new bunny as of several days ago, a female who was spayed about two weeks ago. She doesn’t really have a name yet but we’re considering “Clover”. She’s about a year old and came from a rescue. She’s underweight. She was dumped, they tell me, and other than being too thin, she’s healthy according to the rescue’s vet.

Timothy is 3. He’s a mini-rex. His former partner, Hazel, died suddenly and mysteriously in the middle of the night in November 2013. After that, I looked long and hard for a spayed adult female mini-rex for him and never found one. Finally we settled on Clover, who is large, like Hazel. 

The two buns are in side-by-side enclosures now. At first I had the two enclosures touching, and they tried to fight through the barrier, so I moved them farther apart. We tried a brief meeting on neutral ground and they started to fight but allowed themselves to be separated with no real harm to anyone, just some pulled fur. We will not be trying this again for a while.

I am thinking that for the time being, maybe for another week or two, they should just live next to one another without any close contact. Timothy is curious and it seems like he wishes Clover wasn’t so aggressive. He lays down at the edge of his enclosure closest to her. They watch one another a lot. Maybe switching them into one another’s spaces would help. I’m not sure. 

This bonding will probably take a lot of patience. It was not difficult at all with Hazel and TImothy. He wanted to dominate, and she eventually won the contest without any fighting. 

I rarely heard a sound out of Hazel before Timothy came on the scene — just once, trying to give her mushy food from a syringe after her spay, she said something that clearly meant “No more”. After Timothy joined us, Hazel talked constantly! I haven’t heard any sounds from either bunny so far in this bonding attempt though.

Hazel was my first bunny, so I don’t have a lot of experience with this process. I don’t want to make mistakes and drag it out, so if anyone cares to chime in with advice or suggestions, fire away. I do plan on taking them out for a ride in a box, or maybe put the box on the washer while it’s in the spin cycle. But I think I’ll wait a week or so to try this.

[Suzuko]

Perhaps I should have mentioned that we got Timothy as a baby and he lived side-by-side with Hazel for several months until after he was neutered. They had many “dates” before he was neutered and he always seemed obsessed with mounting her, which after a while became a source of irritation for her. So we kept them completely separated for about a month before and after his surgery.

Maybe it was easier with Hazel because they lived close to one another for a long time, and/or because Timothy came in as a baby. Obviously this is an entirely different situation, but he seems pretty mellow about it and doesn’t instigate aggression, he just defends against it.

[LittlePuffyTail]

I would wait another couple of weeks before doing any bonding dates since it can take up to a month for a bun’s hormones to calm down after a spay. In the meantime, I would def keep them where they can see and smell each other and you can switch their litterboxes every day.

[Suzuko]

It’s been almost five weeks since Clover was spayed and twelve days since she arrived here. They are still living in adjacent pens that are separated by a few inches. I’ve switched them back and forth to one another’s pens several times, letting them spend a few hours at a time in the other’s space. The animosity seems to be getting milder. When I let one or the other out to run around and it goes near the other’s boundary, they sniff one another, sometimes lunge at one another and try to start a fight but I am watching for this and make a loud noise and they quit.

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