New to bunnies bonding problems

[ibepatience]

Wer’re brand new to bunnies. We foster and volunteer for a guinea pig rescue and thought it would be fun to foster a bunny, well of course we fell in love with him. He’s about 6, a big Beveren neutered male who had just lost his companion about 2-3 weeks prior. We knew we’d have to have two so we took him back and intro’d him with a 6 year old female (small, white with pink ears -not sure of her breed) she had also just lost her companion. We put them together and she appeared to snuggle against him and he tried to groom her. We thought we had success so we stopped there and took her home. We were instructed to split his cage in half (4’x4′) and have them live next to each other while we go through the bonding process. We were told to put them in a basket twice a day and pet them and try to get them familiar with eachother. On the third day we started alternating the side of the cage they went back to so they’d be sharing space and litter boxes. On day 5 we put them in a neutral room (laundry room) and gave them veggies. They started fighting a little and he mounted her a little. Nothing too bad. We put them back in their seperate cage sides and tried again the next day. The next day we let them roam the living room and they started fighting. He really wants to be near her, he tries putting his head down for her but she seems to hate him. Now he’s mad and hates her too. He’s getting frustrated because he doesn’t understand why he can’t roam free like he used to but if we let him out and not her we feel bad. If we let her out and not him he gets mad. If we let them both out, instant fight. 

When can I call this a failure? As bad as this sounds, we adopted him and only want a second bunny as a companion for him. If they aren’t going to get along we’ve defeated that purpose. I would like to try another of the bunnies from the rescue, probably one more his size. Is that awful?? I feel really bad about it but it’s just not working and we’re all (including them) suffering. 

Any advice?

[MoveDiagonally]

Welcome to BB!

I think you may have gotten some less than ideal advice as to bonding these rabbits. Here’s what I suggest:
1. Separate bunnies into two completely separate cages. Splitting your existing rabbits cage in half isn’t the best idea because sharing territory before being bonded often causes aggression issues.
2. Give it a break for about a week or two. I would read up on bonding during this time.
3. Re-introduce them in a neutral area. The bathroom is popular because bunnies don’t generally go in there.
4. Continue doing sessions in a neutral area. Increasing the length of your sessions as they get better with each other. Once they get along in neutral I would transition to semi neutral sessions. Once they get better in neutral and you think they’re ready to move in together you can try cementing.
5. To cement you deep clean the area where they will live making it as neutral smelling as possible. You want this to be as “new” of an area as possible. You put them together in their new space and supervise until they get along without fighting for 24-48 hours. After that they should be alright to leave alone together.

Generally litter boxes, ect.. Shouldn’t be introduced until they’ve doing well in semi-neutral as they often cause territorial/aggression issues. If they fight/are aggressive I would stress bond them. I have 5 rabbits bonded together and I’ve always followed the basic outline/process above with some variation depending on what worked. I highly suggest reading through some of the bonding threads in the bonding section of the forum and checking out BB’s bonding article:
https://binkybunny.com/BUNNYINFO/tabid/53/CategoryID/9/PID/940/Default.aspx

Here are some bonding threads (the first two are mine) that you may find helpful:
https://binkybunny.com/FORUM/tabid/54/aft/125145/afpg/4/Default.aspx
https://binkybunny.com/FORUM/tabid/54/aft/127407/afpg/2/Default.aspx
https://binkybunny.com/FORUM/tabid/54/aft/127885/Default.aspx
https://binkybunny.com/FORUM/tabid/54/aft/125513/Default.aspx

Hope some of that helps! I do think there’s hope for your two.  

[ibepatience]

I took them both back to the rescue for some help and advice and I asked if we could try Bev (our male) with a different female, one more his size. She agreed and within minutes she was grooming him. I felt bad “exchanging” her but I had tried not to get close to her because I just had a feeling it wasn’t gonna work.
That was Saturday (4 days ago) and we’re doing okay (I think). I’ve read different things about keeping them next to each other, keeping them within eyesight and keeping them completely seperate. We decided to give the split cage a shot again because they seemed pretty good so far. We put them in a different room than Bev’s been in, in a different cage so he wouldn’t be as territorial. It seems to be working, they sleep almost touching through the cage divider. We have been putting them in a laundry basket and petting and giving treats to get them used to eachother, we even took them for a car ride. Tonight we put them in the tub with lettuce and bananas (his favorite) and they did pretty good. He mounted her and she let him at first then decided to fight back. We broke it up quickly with distractions and they both laid next yo each other with their heads down for a while. We made sure it ended on a good note and put them back in their divided cage.

Anything else I should be doing? How long should the bath tub sessions last? Tonight was about 20 minutes.

How do I post pictures?

[ibepatience]

Bonding is going well, she flopped down twice and groomed herself last night in the tub bonding session. We’re making it about 30 minutes now!

I’m gonna try to post pictures.
Here’s Bev and (currently) Iris
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/20383269@N02/12343385235/][/url]
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/20383269@N02/12343385235/]image[/url] by [url=http://www.flickr.com/people/20383269@N02/]ibepatience[/url], on Flickr

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