Reintroducing father rabbit to family

[Tiglet]

Hi guys,

a couple of weeks ago I made a thread about a surprise litter after another one and what to do because I was scared the older babies would hurt the newer ones. I’m happy to inform you that they are all doing perfectly fine! The 2 oldest babies are at their new home now and the new 4 babies are all doing great.

Now my question is, when can I put the dad back with the mom and these babies. The little ones are 3 weeks old now. Dad has been neutered about 8 weeks ago when the mommy had her first surprise babies. But because a second bunch was coming out we had to keep the dad seperate longer. The mom is still feeding the little ones but they are also already eating hay and drinking water. I let the dad in with his whole family the day before the oldest 2 were leaving for their new home as I wanted him to have actually met them without bars in between. He wasn’t agressive, just sometimes smelling their but and giving them a nudge with his nose in the but. He was more exited to see his old home again and was sprinting and binking all around (super cute ).

so TL;DR: How long after birth can I reintroduce the (already 8+ weeks neutered) dad to his family?

[MoveDiagonally]

Glad everyone is doing well

The babies will have to be separated from mom and by gender in about 5 weeks to avoid more breeding. You can put dad back with mom without worry of breeding BUT I wouldn’t try to re-bond them until mom is spayed (+4 weeks for moms hormones to dissipate).

I’m not experienced with bunny families but bonding in general is best done with all spayed/neutered rabbits.

[Tiglet]

I don’t think the bonding is an issue because when I let the dad be with them for 10 minutes he just smelled them etc… he’s a very gentle rabbit and not agressive at all. They were already together for 2 months or so before the mother got pregnant so they were already bonded, when I put them seperatly I had small bars in between their cages so they could still smell and lick eachother (which they did). My main concern is the dad maybe distrupting the feeding process or something?

[Beka27]

We’re not really equipped here to answer these types of questions. My advice is to wait until the mother has been spayed for about 4 months to reintroduce them. I have no idea what kind of effect a male “father” rabbit has on the relationship between mother and unweaned babies.

Are you planning on finding homes for all of the babies? If so, they really don’t need to be together at all. Once you’re back down to two (mother and father) and she’s spayed, you can proceed from there.

[Author]

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