Re-bonding after spay – is chasing bad or am I over reacting?

[Writtengems]

Advice needed please! We have two female mini-lops. Lily is 11 months and is already spayed. James (originally thought she was a boy) is 7 months old and got spayed last week. When we first bonded them it was love at first sight and they’ve never looked back since… Until James’ spay.

Leading up to her spay, James got very hormonal and was repeatedly humping Lily. Lily then started chasing James a bit, I think out of frustration mainly.

When we bought James home after her spay, we put her straight back with Lily (and kept an eye on them) and they were fine together. But a week on, Lily is repeatedly chasing James and won’t let her out of the corner of the pen. I don’t know how serious this chasing is – she doesn’t bite or nip her, just chases her back into the corner. We’ve ended up separating them and started bunny dates in a neutral area – these seem to go really well. They groom each other and lie next to each other and even flop down, but when we put them back in their pen, Lily starts chasing again (have fully cleaned pen too).

Am I pushing this to soon? James is fine after her spay – lively and running about – puts her head down to Lily to be groomed, but Lily doesn’t seem to want to accept James back in. I thought you kept them separate after a spay to let the hormones calm down, but James seems to be fine – it’s Lily that seems to have the problem. Any advice welcome thanks.

[BubbaBunnies]

Maybe try keeping them together in an x-pen in another room of the house for a bit and then totally clean their cage (bars, everything) again and reorganize it.  Get rid of their old toys and put new ones in. And then if they are doing well in the x-pen then move them back into their cage together and see how it goes.  It just seems like a territory issue form my point of view.

[Sindri]

I totally was going to say the same thing as BubbaBunnies. Try that and see how things work. I wish you the best of luck!

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