Once bonded can they live in what was her territory?

[Claire]

I did a first close encounter bonding session with Honey (possibly unspayed, approx 3yrs) and hartley (neutered 8 mths) yesterday in the bath tub and it went well. It ended in Hartley mounting honey and cleaning her.

Hartley currently lives in the hallway outside the living room and honey lives in the living room. In an ideal world, once bonded we would like them to live in the living room,but I am worried that this will always be honeys space.

Help?!

Thanks in advance

[Sleepy]

It’s possible but you *really* need to a ) do your best to neutralize it before moving them in b ) get them used to sharing things or the space (possibly through swapping their living areas). Bleu ended up moving in with Guinness but swapping living spaces wasn’t possible for us so we had to wash and vinegar everything down, change the layout a bit to make it seem new to them both, and filled it with things they were both familiar with. However, Guinness also asserted her dominance hard since she still considered it “her” space and we’re mostly lucky Bleu was willing to give it to her.

If Honey’s unspayed, you should look into spaying her because a ) female bunnies who are 3-4 have up to an 80% chance of developing cancer b ) if she’s unspayed, hormones will kick in territory-wise. This may make it harder to move him in with her.

[kurottabun]

Could you elaborate on why Honey is “possibly” unspayed? Female buns are notorious for being territorial, so if she’s really unspayed it’ll be very difficult to bond her with somebunny else, especially if he will be in her territory. Hormones are unstable things and you will never know when she may turn hormonal towards Hartley or start being aggressive.

For health reasons, it’s best to check if Honey is really spayed (and spay her if she’s not). At 3 years old she has a high chance of getting uterine cancer and if she does get it, she will need to have an emergency spay anyway of which the risks are higher.

[sarahthegemini]

You’d need to really clean it to neutralise any scents and rearrange it so it looks ‘different’ too. But yes, that would be fine. When my rabbits were seperated, they had half the living room each and every few days we swapped their sides. Once we’d got past bonding in neutral space (which for us was our bedroom) we took down the barrier in the living room, got rid of their home bases, cleaned as best we could and set up a pen in the middle of the room to do the final cementing bond phase.

[Claire]

Hi all thanks,

We rescued Honey in November last year and the vet said he couldn’t tell without being more invasive but thay he couldnt see any scars.

We are considering splitting our living room in half as it is quite large.

We will be changing vets soon so will look into getting Honey spayed.

[Author]

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