Bonding Two Females

[SammiiRose]

Hello,

I have a one and half year old, spayed female bunny, Tatum. She used to be bonded to her sister before we got her, but the people didn’t adopt her with her sister. My coworker has a 4 year old female bunny who is unspayed, Stoffel. She needs to rehome the bunny because ever since she had a baby, the bunny has been miserable and she wants the bunny to be happy. I agreed that I’d take her if her and my bunny got along.

I read that it’ll take a while for them to get along, but today when we introduced them in a neutral territory, they fought twice. I put their cages next to each other and their fine when their in their cages, they have leaned over to sniff at one another and my Tatum has been very curious (she’s the one who started the fight to begin with, Stoffel doesn’t seem to have any problem). 

I was wondering if you had any advice? I love my coworkers bunny and would like to keep her, and if I do take her she’s getting fixed, but is there anyway a spayed female and an unspayed female might tolerate eachother enough for me to know that they’ll get along in the future?

Thank!

Sammii

[Sirius&Luna]

You can’t bond unspayed females, as they can be very territorial and aggressive. The first step to bonding should always be spaying/neutering, so really there’s no way of knowing how these two will get along before Stoffel is spayed.

Bunnies should never be allowed to fight during bonding. Tatum probably started the fight because a new bunny was dumped into her territory. This is why prebonding is important, as it helps the bunnies to lose a sense of what is their territory, and they get used to the smell of the other bunny. Please don’t introduce them again until you’ve followed the steps below. You risk serious injuries, and will also teach them to hate/fear each other if they keep meeting and fighting.

You also need to give the new bunny time to settle in before bonding, and do some prebonding. So your steps should be:

– Spay Stoffell and give her two weeks in a separate room to recover and settle in
– Move her near to Tatum (but ensure they can’t touch through bars) and swap them between cages every other day. This is prebonding.
– After at least a month of prebonding, you should no longer be seeing any aggression when you swap cages. If there is still aggression, pre bond a little longer.
– THEN you can introduce them in neutral space

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