Should I get another bun?

[Marley&Tilly]

So we have a one-year-old female Lionhead Dwarf (unspayed) and we were thinking of getting another, younger rabbit to keep her company when we’re not in the room with her. (She has the run of my bedroom – we’ve bunny-proofed it so she can’t hurt herself.) Of course, we’d be in the room to see if they’d get along. 

We introduced her to a stuffed elephant toy and she was licking it as if grooming a young rabbit, and we thought that this may be behaviour that would be ok if another rabbit was in the room? She is very gentle and has never made a growling/territorial noise in her life. At the moment she is moulting quite a bit, would this be a problem with another rabbit? 

We would buy another cage and set it up in a similar style and get them separate food bowls/water bottles etc.

Do you think that it would be ok to get another younger rabbit? We’d probably have to get the new one spayed, maybe Tilly (our rabbit) as well. I saw the bunny bonding section and I like the idea of putting a sieve in between them at first…

Thank you for reading.

[tobyluv]

You would definitely have to get Tilly spayed, as well as having any new rabbit spayed or neutered before you can introduce them. You would need to let her and the other rabbit recuperate for a month before starting the bonding process. Most rabbits in rescues are already spayed or neutered, so that would save you some time and money, if you adopt one from a rescue. It’s usually easier to bond a spayed female to a neutered male. Female rabbits should be spayed anyway, due to the high incidence of uterine cancer, so it would be a good idea to go ahead and make an appointment for Tilly to have the surgery. Then she would be ready to meet another bunny in a month, as long as that bunny was spayed or neutered. By the time she has had surgery and recuperated, she should be finished molting, so that shouldn’t be a concern.

Besides the bonding article that you saw here, this is another good article: http://rabbit.org/faq-bonding-multiple-rabbits/

Even though that article mentions a 2 week time period after spay and neuter before you can start bonding, it’s now thought that a 4 week time period is better.

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