Jealous bunny?

[JackRabbit]

When bonding an already bonded pair with another bunny, can one or both become jealous of the new bun?  I’ve seen dogs become jealous, but jealous bunnies?

[Zombie-Sue]

Yes.

A long, long time ago (in a galaxy far away…) I was working on bonding two rabbits. It never happened because the new rabbit died suddenly =( but anyway, we had their cages pretty close together.

Tank is not a jumper. Not a jumper at all lol. He has levels in his cage and very rarely he’ll jump the 14″ to the first platform if his current friends are already up there. We used to keep him in a pen that was only a foot high, like for two years, and he never tried to get out ever. He just doesn’t like jumping lol.

But before we did that we kept him in a cage that was 3 grids high (42″ or three and a half feet high). One day my husband was petting the new rabbit, and Tank, who is NOT YOUNG BY THE WAY, jumped out of his cage to my husband, getting his little foot stuck in the adjoining cage.

[LBJ10]

I think sometimes one bun does get left out a bit. Say you have a bonded pair and you add a third bun. One of the already bonded ones may take a liking to the new bun and pay less attention to their old buddy. So in that sense, I can see a bun becoming “jealous”. Probably not jealous in the sense a person would be, but they could certainly feel left out.

[Deleted User]

As you know JR I have no idea about bonded bunnies, but for anyone or any animal I (personally) am a great believer of TWO or a bunch. Maybe I am going back to my high school days, LOL! But I hated being in groups of 3. I did much better in a bigger group or a special friend (I know, silly me). I am down to 3 dog’s now, but had 4. Having 3 is no longer an issue as they are all so old and are more fussed on our company than each others. Like I said, I’m sure this sounds super silly, comparing dog’s and human’s to bunny’s, but thought it may be worth mentioning? I hate anyone/thing being left out, and am only happy to keep Henry as a lone bun because he has bonded to our dog’s – 3 to choose from every day! Ha ha ha ha….. and he goes for the eldest (almost 15yo who is deaf, blind and no longer quick – no wonder!), LOL! But in the next breath, we have heaps of BBer’s who have 3 bun’s and don’t seem to have the jealousy issue? Go figure? It really is gonna boil down to your 3 individual buns personalities/friendship’s. Hard one JR. Good luck! (and I know you only meant to get one bunny and ended up with the two! (for that particular purchase). And I love that you did that!). Cheers.
PS – with our dog’s, I don’t think there was any jealousy, but we clearly had/have a top dog. (though I think Henry has since taken over that role….).

[JackRabbit]

I’ve thought about the 3 thing.  My justification for the trio (after the fact!) is that if something happened to one of them, the other two would still have each other (in our case bonding them with the dog is definitely not an option).  After the scuffle the other night, I commented to my husband that we might ought to get one more bunny to bond with Kieko.  He didn’t say anything, just gave me “the look”.  He’s probably thinking that if I went to get one more to make it an even 4 that I’m liable to end up with 6!  Wasn’t spaying/neutering supposed to keep them from multiplying?!?!

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