Can a bunny be uninterested in bonding?

[Horlicks]

We recently decided to make the big decision to get our resident girl (spayed) bunny a companion. We brought her down to a local rabbit rescue and decided to adopt a sweet natured boy bun (neutered) because she seems to have the most chemistry with him.

Fast forward a few weeks later. We have been doing pre bonding by setting up their playpens next to each other. We also started bonding dates where our resident bun begins humping hum all the time but thankfully no biting.

So this is the problem. Throughout the whole bonding dates, our male bun has been quite distant. He will often sit at one corner, not moving whereas my resident bun is very relaxed. She will try to hump him to show dominance but often doesn’t get any response (other than him running away) and she will just end up sleeping in one corner. I actually sometimes get bored by the inactivity haha.

I can tell my resident bun is interested in him. Everytime we let her out to roam, she will always lie next to him, separated by the playpen fence. But he just doesn’t want to seem to do anything. Be it either humping her back, or grooming her to accept her dominance. He just sits in one corner.

I’ve been told so long there’s no aggressiveness it’s a good sign but I’d love to progress things. Could it be possible that our adopted male bun just prefers to be alone? ‘

Thanks for your help.

[Sirius&Luna]

Some bunnies do not ever bond, but it’s quite rare. It’s also more likely that they would show that through aggression to the other rabbit rather than indifference.

Indifference during bonding is generally seen as a positive sign (or not a negative one at least). But it sounds like your male bun could be very overwhelmed by the situation, and doesn’t have the confidence to interact with her yet. How long have you had him? He might just need some more time to settle in to his new home and to bond with you, so that he feels more confident. Whats he like during non-bonding time? Does he explore and interact with you?

Some bunnies do find the bonding process (the being moved into a neutral space all the time and being with a new bunny) extremely stressful, so I think it would be worth trying to make him more comfortable first. It sounds like he isn’t at all territorial or aggressive, so perhaps you could let him spend a bit of time in the neutral space before you bring her in, so he comes out of his shell a bit.

If he’s running away so they don’t interact, you could try putting them in a smaller space together, so that there’s no chasing or running, but I really think you should work on helping him to feel calm first.

[Horlicks]

Posted By Sirius&Luna on 6/15/2018 3:51 AM
Some bunnies do not ever bond, but it’s quite rare. It’s also more likely that they would show that through aggression to the other rabbit rather than indifference.

Indifference during bonding is generally seen as a positive sign (or not a negative one at least). But it sounds like your male bun could be very overwhelmed by the situation, and doesn’t have the confidence to interact with her yet. How long have you had him? He might just need some more time to settle in to his new home and to bond with you, so that he feels more confident. Whats he like during non-bonding time? Does he explore and interact with you?

Some bunnies do find the bonding process (the being moved into a neutral space all the time and being with a new bunny) extremely stressful, so I think it would be worth trying to make him more comfortable first. It sounds like he isn’t at all territorial or aggressive, so perhaps you could let him spend a bit of time in the neutral space before you bring her in, so he comes out of his shell a bit.

If he’s running away so they don’t interact, you could try putting them in a smaller space together, so that there’s no chasing or running, but I really think you should work on helping him to feel calm first.

He’s been in our house for about 2 weeks now. The first 1.5 weeks or so, they are just doing pre bonding being next to each other in separate playpens. We have had them interact with each other for about 3 bonding dates.

Because our resident bun free roams quite a fair bit of the house, we’ve only had quite a small space for him to run around during our non bonding time. He’s such a sweet boy, always running along to me and staying still for head pats. I feel bad sometimes that I couldn’t give him a bigger space to run around unlike our resident bun. We tried once to bring him into our resident buns usual free roam territory and she got really angry.

Will you suggest we hold off the bonding sessions first? I thought 1. 5 weeks of pre bonding would have been enough but perhaps we need longer to have him settled down in his new house?

[Sirius&Luna]

The general rule is to give the new bunny two weeks to settle, without any prebonding. Then, after that do a month of prebonding.

This is because when a bunny is in a new house, they often feel stressed and so you don’t see their true behaviour. So some people (not you of course), might see new boy not being aggressive with the existing girl, and say ‘oh great, they’re bonded’ and then a month down the line, when the new bun isn’t so new anymore, he decides to try and assert dominance and suddenly they’re fighting. We see this happen quite a lot here, so really, my main advice when bonding is to take it slow, even though that can be frustrating.

The fact that he runs up to you for head pats normally makes it seem like he is feeling stressed in the bonding situation, as clearly he’s not generally a super shy/skittish bunny.

So, I would advise that you spend at least a month prebonding from now. The fact that your resident bun got really angry when he was in her territory is another big reason to pre bond – she needs to get used to the idea of him in her space so that they can live together once they’re bonded.

Can you split her space in half with some pen walls temporarily? You’ll need a double layer so they can’t nip each other through them. Then you’ll need to swap them between sides every other day, so they both get to smell each others scents all over the place, and your existing female stops seeing all the territory as hers. She probably will be extremely angry at the beginning, but that’s normal, and she’ll get over it.

[sarahthegemini]

Your moving way too fast. Pre bonding needs to be done for a month AFTER bun has had a couple weeks to settle in.

[Horlicks]

Thanks for the advice guys! The local rabbit rescue said we could attempt bonding once we got our male bun home but it seems like that isn’t the case and we’re rushing things..

I will give my male bun sometime to settle down first and get used to us. I hope he takes to us! He’s a really sweet boy.

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