Bunny bonding. Our experience so far/Any advice???

[Andrew]

Hi everyone,

Hoping to get some thoughts/feedback on my bunny bonding experience over the past week and see if anyone has any advice if it sounds like we’re doing something wrong.

We have a female 8 month old mini lop named Bailey who we’ve had with us since around 13 weeks of age. She has been spayed. A few weeks back we decided that we wanted to get her some company so we went down to the RSPCA and rescued an Angora cross named Henderson. Henderson has been neutered and the vet estimates that he is around 1 year old. He has a lovely temperament and loves being fussed over.

Here is what we’ve done so far;

Day 1 – Day 6: We’ve moved Bailey inside for the winter and happen to have 2 generously sized bunny cages which we have set up facing each other so that the bunnies can get used to being around each other. We have swapped out toys, boxes, water bottles and litter trays over the week to help them get acclimatised to each other’s scents. During feeding time, we have put their food bowels right next to each other either side of the bars to get them used to eating next to each other.

Day 7 – (MEETING 1) Bailey & Henderson meet for the for first time. We put them in the kitchen as this is neutral territory. The floor is covered in boxes, toys and leaves as distractions and the rabbits hop around with each other for half an hour. They give each other the odd sniff but nothing much. Henderson shows little to absolutely no interest in Bailey and Bailey has the odd sniff but doesn’t seem phased either. I’ve read a lack of interest is a good sign. Anyway they’ve had half an hour so we separate them again happy with a good first meeting.

Day 8 – (MEETING 2)They spend roughly another half an hour together and it follows a very similar trend to meeting 1, but this time in the living room. The odd sniff, but mostly ignoring. Perhaps two half an hour meetings was too long but I’ve read that if the meeting is going well extend it for as long as possible…perhaps that wasn’t the right thing to do though because after around 30 mins Henderson starts to mount Bailey continuously. At first nothing too intense but then he starts to mount her from the front rather than behind and is being very rough. Bailey clearly does not like it and starts to struggle and run away, they start chasing each other round in circles which I’m told is a bunny tornado so I separate them and that’s it for meeting 2. Henderson at one point did have a grip of Bailey’s skin with his teeth but there is no blood and Bailey shows no sign of injury.

Day 9 – (Meeting 3)We decide to have them meet in the kitchen again as it is more neutral. They hop around for around 10 minutes again, exploring showing little interest but after 10 minutes Henderson starts being rough again, mounting Baileys face. We separate them numerous times but Henderson really wants to Mount her. I assume this needs to happen somewhat for Henderson to assert some sort of dominance but he is very rough so we spray him with water to discourage. They are separated again.

Day 10 (Numerous meetings) – We give them three little meetings in the kitchen again, each for around 10 minutes following a similar pattern with them not showing interest at first. Henderson is mounting Bailey but she is running away a lot less, almost as if she’s accepting her fate that Henderson is the top bunny? Eventually Henderson keeps going to mount her face so we discourage him with separating him and water spray every time he does it. You can see he is starting to associate mounting her face with the water bottle so hesitates a bit more but once he sets Bailey in his sights he really wants to mount.

Today is Day 11. They’ve had 5-6 meetings now. From what I’ve described what do you all think? Are we doing everything right or would you suggest changing it up a bit?

Sorry for the essay, I just want to paint the best picture possible. We really want this to be a successful bonding and having never done this before we are starting to feel a bit frustrated but we are desperate to make this work!

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks!

[sarahthegemini]

It sounds like things are moving verrry fast. Generally it is recommended that new bun is allowed to settle in for 2 weeks at least away from your other bun and then you do a further 4 weeks of pre bonding after that before an actual introduction. I would also do much shorter sessions if you want to approach bonding in the traditional way.

So, slow down

[Nutmeg]

I agree with Sarah above.

Start back at square one. Give Henderson more time to settle in along with the pre-bonding for at least a month.

What I also found helped during pre-bonding is a stuffed animal that is about the same size… Let Bailey get her scent on it – then introduce the stuffed animal to Henderson..he will probably try to hump it – sniff it and mark it as his territory by chinning it – things like that. This is all ok because obviously the stuffed animal is not going to re-act.
Then put it back in with Bailey so that it smells like Henderson. She can get used to something the size of him/smelling like him, that does not hump her face.

Just watch to make sure they don’t start to eat the stuffed animal.

I know you are excited to have them living together, but unfortunately it is not a usually a fast process and you have to go at their speed.

PS : CONGRATS on the new fur-baby!

[Andrew]

Thank you both for your replies. Any advice is good advice at this stage as we’re novices at this but trying really hard. We’ve slowed down a bit. We haven’t gone cold turkey with the meetings, we put them back together last night for 10 minutes only and they had just enough time to hop around and explore without anything breaking out. We ended on a good note so very small interactions are the way forward for now and we’ll slowly build up in a few weeks time.

Thanks again!

[sarahthegemini]

But you NEED to halt bonding sessions until you’ve allowed new bun to settle and you’ve done sufficient pre bonding. There is no point continuing to do sessions when you haven’t done the first two steps.

Trying to bond when one bun isn’t entirely confident in their new home is a recipe for disaster because once they DO gain confidence, they could very well decide that they’re not happy with the arrangement in their ‘bond’ A lot of bonds break because proper steps weren’t taken and fights can occur down the line.

[Nutmeg]

Again, I have to agree with Sarah.
I know its tempting to just “have them get along” but doing things in the proper order for the proper length of time will stop the “bond” from breaking later because it wasn’t as solid as you thought.
There are lots of posts on here of people posting about “bonded pairs suddenly fight” – 90% of the time its because they rushed the bonding process.

I did pre-bonding for 2 months and have been doing bonding dates for 3 and a half weeks now. They still have Face-humping / chasing issues (not as bad as before by a long shot) but they still aren’t at a point where I would just put them together 24/7 yet.

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