Bonding two spayed females! HELP?!

[Ella]

We’ve had our bunny, Peanut, for about a month and decided to get her a friend. We found another bunny that was desperately in need of a home online and agreed to take her as she was spayed and we are prepared to spend the extra time bonding. We let them sniff around the cages and see each other through bars on the first night. There was some charging and nipping from within the cage and slight aggression but we assumed this was just due new smells and bunnies. We were fairly relaxed about it but then Peanut managed to pull the new bunny’s cage open and a fight happened. We split them up immediately and neither were hurt.

Today, we did the same caged introductions and the aggressive behaviour dulled to both bunnies mostly ignoring each other. From there we moved to a 15 minute session in the bathroom and the rabbits seemed okay for the first 5 minutes. Peanut then began mounting Pebbles (new bunny) and we separated them after a few seconds to stop fighting. When we didn’t stop the mounting, Pebbles would become agitated and attacked Peanut, resulting in another fight. We put a divider between them for 5 minutes and when we removed it there was some aggression and nipping but this eventually calmed down and they say on opposite sides of the bath to groom and generally ignored each other.

As we are bonding for the first time we were wondering if this is positive or if we’re doing everything wrong! We’re slightly unsure of how to proceed so I was hoping for any and all advice you can give!

[Kokaneeandkahlua]

I would stop for now. Your new bunny needs to get used to you first. This is very stressful stuff to go through -if you were having a simple time of it, that’d be fine, but I see a lot of work in future.

Use a hair dryer to check both for any wounds, it’s hard to see small scrapes but you want to make sure you find them if they are there.

Let each bunny settle-and I would house them in different rooms, they can’t settle when they are worried about the ‘other guy’.I wouldn’t attempt any face to face bonding for a month at least. They need to chill and things should go slow. The more fights the more likely it won’t work out. You want small positive steps. 

Then your first step should be swapping a towel or a stuffed toy back and forth so they get used to each others smells.

Then you go on from there

 I’d definitely suggest reading threads in this part of the forum, find some similar stories and see what they found worked and didn’t. But my biggest suggestion is back waaay up and give them some time first before you do anything. 

[Taffytato]

Hi Ella, I’m having a similar problem here too. My 2 lops, Taffy and Tato, seem to be in a love hate relationship.

I’ve had taffy for 3 years, and Tato for a month. Been try to bond these 2 girls for the past week. They are both around 2-3 years old and sterilized.

Before the adoption, we brought taffy over to tato’s place several times. No fighting occurred, just sniffing and head bumping each other. So I thought Tato was the right match and adopted her.

They are housed in adjoining play pens, and would fight thru bars. Nothing serious but sometimes I would find small tuffs of fur.

Taffy would be more aggressive to Tato when housed in her pen. Constantly standing up, trying to scratch and bite Tato thru the divider. Tato was initially a very submissive bunny.

3 days later, Tato seemed to pick up taffy’s habits and would try to bite taffy through the divider as well.

I do bonding sessions in the toilet. The worse fight was when taffy bit Tato, and Tato retaliated by biting taffy’s ears, so taffy has a small tear on her ear.

They fight lesser now, be it in bondings or thru bars. I seem to have better luck in bonding during the afternoon than the night.

They still fight during bathroom bonding but I always have my water spray on standby. Physically separating them by hand doesn’t work.

Now taffy grooms Tato but it seems like Tato hasn’t accepted taffy and still bears a grudge on how taffy treated her violently in the past as Tato would always demand for grooming from taffy, and if taffy stops, she would bite taffy and taffy would retaliate, resulting in a fight again.

Maybe your female buns are like mine too.

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