Trio Project

[Smillex]

Hi all! I’ve been researching around but have not found anything about bonding 3 rabbits at the same time. So I want to share this process with you guys and to receive help and advice if I run into problems during their bonding process. I have 3 rabbits: Rue, Levi and Luna. They are currently all unfixed but they have their surgeries tomorrow morning and I will continue from there. 

They’re roughly around the same age, about 1 year and a half. Luna and Levi are siblings and are rexs(Rexes? Rexs’? ). I got Luna and Levi from a friend when they were about 3 months. Rue is a mini-lop/lionhead with the cutest helicopter ears and she was part of an accidental liter from my brother’s bunnies. 

Luna has a brown coat of fur and looks like a typical wild rabbit but she’s the sweetest one of the three. She can just sit next to me for hours as I pet her. She’s also kind of bossy, stop petting her and she’ll start the nipping! Levi has sleek black fur with a single paw dipped in white. He’s also a grunt-er…but don’t worry. It’s all part of his tough guy act, he’s the scared-y cat. He’ll grunt and stomp his feet but he’s scared of any big shadow and even when I wear thick socks he’ll hide behind his liter box. Rue is a cold beauty. She’s white with black ears and eyes lined with black which makes them seem much bigger than they are. Rue has been the most difficult one for me to bond with. She’s had GI stasis before and made a full recovery but because of all the handling, she’s very wary of hands. 

I have them housed in side by side cages in my apartment bedroom. So they’re familiar with one another but still do some hair pulling if they’re able to reach each other. 

With that, I will update you guys tomorrow after their surgeries! Good night. 

*If this is something that I can’t post up here please let me know, thanks! 

[Azerane]

How are they doing? I hope they are all recovering well from surgery

I don’t know if it’s Rexs or Rexes, or you could just save the trouble and say Rex rabbits

[Smillex]

Update:
They’re recovering really well from the surgeries. BUT! Levi turned out to be a girl. When I first got her, I wasn’t sure if she was a boy or a girl but whenever I had her out, she would spray her pee so I thought for sure she was a boy. So I have 3 girls now which I’m hoping won’t make bonding more difficult, I was hoping that the boy would be kind of like a mediator for the girls since boy-girl pairs are a lot easier than girl-girl. Anyway, they’re doing great and pretty much back to normal with eating and pooping. But I’ve seen that Levi and Rue are having more arguments than usual. They’re trying to get at each other through the cages and they’re grunting a lot. I’m hoping they resolve their issue before I start bonding.
Also, I’ve learned that Levi hates taking medication. She would NOT stay still when she knew it was coming. Tried to bite me too. Poor baby.
So how long should I wait before I start bonding them? It’s been a week and I’ve seen a lot of information about waiting 2 weeks or even a whole month. I move out of my current apartment in July though. So should I just wait to bond them after I move in to my new place?

[Smillex]

Update:

They’re doing great! Everyone seems back to normal now with eating and pooping, their incisions are healing really nice. But I have 3 girls now, Levi turned out to be a girl. When I first got her, I couldn’t tell what gender she was but because she would spray her pee a lot, I thought for sure she was a boy. I was hoping that as a boy, Levi would kind of help the bonding process because boy-girl pairs are easier but I will just have to see how things turn out. For the past few days, Levi and Rue have been in a tuff, they’re pulling each other’s fur through the cages and growling non-stop but that might just be that the surgeries made them agitated. 

So I’ve been doing some research on when to start bonding them after fixing them. I’ve seen 2 weeks to a whole month. I’m also moving out of my current apartment at the end of July. Should I just wait until I move into my new place to bond them? Maybe it doesn’t matter at all? I was planning on starting to bond them in 2 weeks after their incisions heal completely. 

[Mikey]

Rabbits can go through a post spay craze, heightening their hormones for a few days/weeks. Youll want to wait about 2 months before starting to bond them. 2 months because girls can take up to six months after being spayed before they drain all of their own hormones. You want to wait 2 months, test in a neutral area, if fighting breaks out almost instantly, split it for another month then try again. While doing all of this: prebond. Prebonding is having their cages close (like you have it now) and swapping around their litter boxes, toys, water dishes, ect once a day

[Smillex]

Bonding Session One

First session was in the bathtub, about 15-20 minutes long. Lots of aggression from Levi. She’s very dominate and did all of the mounting. Luna’s the most submissive one, it was great with her, Rue groomed her a bit, so that was nice to see. Unfortunately, we had some fights break out. Some nipping from Rue towards Levi and she was not happy about that. Their fighting riled Luna up, so everyone was nipping any furry butts that came close. I had to take Levi out of the tub for a bit so I can separate the other two and have everyone calm down. I read that I shouldn’t end the session with a fight, so I put Levi back in and put all three of them side by side and started petting them for a few minutes. I ended the session there before any fights broke out again. All in all, it wasn’t as successful as I’d like to admit.

I’m a little nervous for the next session. I’m scared they’ll start fighting again and it won’t work out. Any tips on how I can lessen the aggression? I’m thinking I can do a session with just Levi and Rue since Luna isn’t as aggressive, she seems much easier to bond with either rabbit. Please let me know how you guys bonded your rabbits. And how I should end it next time when they start fighting. 

Note to self: Get thicker gloves and recruit an assistant.  It was quite hard breaking up the fight with only two hands and 3 angry bunnies. 

Bonus picture: (Left to right:Levi, Rue Luna) Levi’s currently shedding so there was 2x the amount of fur. 

[Mikey]

Have you done any prebonding? If not, you skipped a step and thats why theyre so eager to fight…

[tronbunny]

Oooh, what’s pre-bonding?

[Author]

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