Help separating bonded bunnies!!

[mangoandbourbon]

Hi there, 

I have two 3 1/2 month old bunnies that we got from a lady that had an accidental litter. She told me that both the bunnies were female but after having them for a week we were convinced this was not true. After a trip to the vets for vacs it was confirmed that Mango is in fact a boy and he is now booked in to be neutered at 4 months old. We know they need to be seperated which is what we have done as we luckily had a spare hutch. The only problem is that they were very well bonded and were constantly together. Now they are separated Bourbon (girl) has been going crazy in her hutch and become really disruptive and Mango just sits in the bottom of his hutch as he can see her from there. We were told to put the hutches facing so that they could see it other but now I’m not sure this is the best idea. 

Also once he has recovered and past the safe zone will we have to bond them again as they will have had so long apart? I feel this is stressing them out a lot.

Any guidance would be very much appreciated.    

[JackRabbit]

You’ll want to plan to go through the bonding steps with them but they may fall in love right away. You might want to consider keeping them apart until both are neutered/spayed because you will have to separate them again for her surgery, and because she will likely get pretty nutty (moody, territorial, etc) once her hormones kick in. If they are together while her hormones are crazy, they could end up fighting and making re-bonding difficult.

I had my bonded babies (half-siblings born a few days apart but kept together) spayed/neutered at the same time for just these reasons. We kept them in separate cages (right next to each other) for awhile even after they healed and hormones dissipated due to space issues, but let them have play time together starting a couple weeks after surgery (we didn’t know at the time to wait 4 to 6 weeks). Ours did fine, and were thrilled to see each other.

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