Should spayed rabbit be allowed free reign of the house whilst male rabbit is waiting to be neutered?

[Jasmine5000]

 Hi all,

I’m looking for some advice please! We have had our female lop Lola since we adopted her in January – she is a dream. As lovely a can be and now has free reign of our house without any problem.

This weekend I adopted a male rabbit hoping Lola would enjoy some company. He is 5 months old and we have him booked in to be neutered in a weeks time. We have tried to introduce the bunnies twice in the bathroom but he won’t stop trying to mount her so have decided to wait until after he has had the op. The last 3 days we have been home and Lola has had her normal free reign of the flat, every now and again they will investigate each other but apart from the first day there hasn’t been any aggressive behaviour through the bars (apart from the odd nip). Lola tends to ignore him, he on the other hand gets quite excitable in the cage.

I was just wondering if we are doing the right thing allowing her to stay out during the day? We don’t want to upset her routine. But unsure if our new rabbit will be annoyed that he is caged whilst Lola runs around? Any advice greatly appreciated 

Many thanks 

Jasmine xx

[Stickerbunny]

Powder was free run while I was waiting for the surgeries to bond Stickers and him, didn’t have any issues. Obviously, it would be good to let the male have some run time too though since you have to wait for surgery + wait 4 weeks after it for him to heal up and his hormones to settle before you can bond.

Note: You may end up having to cage BOTH of them by the way if they bond and the male is not as well behaved as your current bun, or they have litter issues etc after bonding (which is common). Powder is perfectly well behaved, but Stickers my female is a terror – she chews, destroys, eats carpet and no amount of bunny proofing can prevent her damaging stuff so I can’t allow him to be free run anymore since they bonded. So make sure you have a proper setup for two buns caged/x-penned except for supervised play times in case that is an issue.

[Jasmine5000]

Hi,

Thanks for the advice, we will carry on letting Lola out in the day then. Hopefully he witll grow to be as well behaved as she is!

We are letting Reggie have a run around when we can watch him (his toilet training is somewhat to be desired at present, hoping this improves after neutering!). This has mainly been in the hallway as we can close him off from Lola. We have let him have a run around in the lounge (where the cages are) twice which he has enjoyed. One of these times Lola was in her cage and she went mad at him through the bars when he got too close to her cage. I guess this is territorial? Should we let this carry on or just let him out when Lola is in a different room? Suppose I want them to get used to each other but to not hurt each other doing so!

Thanks again 🙂

[Beka27]

What are your plans for bonding? Do you have a neutral area for initial bonding sessions, and a semi-neutral area for the next stage of bonding?

I would probably begin to limit her out time now so it isn’t a shock when she gets limited later on. As the bonding progresses, the only out time will be during the bonding sessions themselves.

[Jasmine5000]

We were planning on waiting until several weeks after the male (Reggie) has been neutered then let them bond in the bathroom and see how they get on. I’ve read up a lot of the techniques on here so no doubt they will be useful!

After that we are running out of neutral areas as Lola goes everywhere else! I just hope they become friends! The cage we have for Reggie seems a bit small so if the process is going to take a while we may need to invest in a larger house for him

[Jasmine5000]

 

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