Never ending humping, confused dominance

[Freddi.w]

I’m bonding my rabbits and I have been doing it for around 38 days and my male rabbit Toffee won’t stop humping her. I’m not sure anymore if it’s even for dominance but I’m also confused because caramel, my female, will like shove her head under him and really wants him to groom her. Do they both want to be dominant? I’m so confused on what they’re doing. Please help

[Kokaneeandkahlua]

Do they fight? Bite each other? How long are they together? Where are you doing the bonding, and for how long, what type of bonding activities, how do they spend the majority of their time? Do they eat together?

[Freddi.w]

They don’t fight, but caramel will nip him when she’s had enough of him. The longest they’ve been together was 30 min but it’s usually 20 minutes everyday. I do the smoosh method where you smush them together and put there faces next to eachother and pet them. I’ve tried the banana but I don’t think I’ll do it again because I’m not sure who’s the dominant one. Lately they’ve been ignoring eachother on opposite sides of the bathroom. I’ve been doing bonding in the bathroom with the toilet blocked off for the first week I did it i the bathtub. They eat next to eachother in their cages but I don’t think they notice eachother.

[Freddi.w]

[Kokaneeandkahlua]

Thanks for answering so quick!

I’d set aside worrying about who is dominant. I don’t think it’s helping! (Personally I don’t believe in dominance…)

From what you are describing you have some fairly successful but short sessions, no fighting, very little grooming and a little humping.

Why do you end your sessions at about 20/30 minutes? Have you tried longer?

At this point if it were me, I’d be feeding them dinner together, in a large room (so they can get away from each when they’d like) and having long periods of time together-perhaps the whole evening, every evening until the weekend, then try living together from there on out.

Bonded pairs will hump or nip at each other occasionally. As long as your not seeing a fight or one trying to escape the other-I think you can progress!

[Freddi.w]

Well I end them early because I am a scaredy cat and I like to end things when they’re going well before a potential fight would break out. Caramel gets frustrated with toffee because he humps her. I’ll try the dinner feeding, they both are extremely happy when they even see me approaching the food container, so hopefully it’ll work. But caramel tends to nip at him if she has finished her food and he’s still working on it but we’ll see.

[LBJ10]

Humping is fine as long as there is no fighting. Eventually, they will work things out and then humping will subside. I remember Leopold would hump Wooly practically non-stop. Sometimes they just need to have enough time to work it out (or in Leopold’s case, get all humped out. LOL).

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