Bonding female adult with baby male

[TheLunaTimes]

Hi all,

My gf and I have a 11 month year old female netherland dwarf (Luna), we got her about 5 months ago so she has been alone for quite a while. We decided to get her a friend in the form of a now 9 week old male holland lop (Boulder).

When we first introduced them to eachother in the pet store and observed them interacting for around 20 minutes, everything seemed ok, she sniffed him at first but otherwise had no reaction, while the Boulder was content doing his own thing so we thought it could work.

Over the past week however we have had them side by side in cages, but Luna has been displaying aggressive behaviour towards Boulder, once attacking with her paws and other time trying to bite his ear when it poked through his fence. On the otherhand both of them can also be seen lying and relaxing next to each other so it has been a bit confusing to read Luna’s behaviour because Boulder is extremely tame and seems very easy going, rarely seems stressed at all.

We tried our first dating session in the shower where Luna has only been once hoping it would be neutral enough.. immediately however Luna was trying to escape while Boulder was just sitting there chomping on the little hay we put down. It didn’t take long for Luna to turn her attention to Boulder, put her head next to his body and then aggressively bite.. not even spraying her with water could stop anything she was drenched and had no intention of stopping to groom herself up.. we watched her attack 3 more times before we decided to call it off.

Does anyone have advise on how we can handle this situation? Luna is spayed, so we were hoping she wouldn’t be so territorial but clearly she doesn’t seem to like the presence of another rabbit. I’ve also read that perhaps we should wait till Boulder is old enough to get neutered first anyway as hormones may change his behaviour.. would leaving them side by side for too long affect their ability to bond later?

Any advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks for reading

[tobyluv]

It really would be best to get Boulder neutered before you attempt bonding. That is always the first step in bonding. In just a few weeks, Boulder’s hormones are going to kick in and he will likely want to hump Luna, probably continuously. That will probably cause her to want to bite him and act aggressive toward him even more. Rabbits can severely injure each other when fighting, so you want to try to prevent that as much as possible.

You can keep their cages near each other until his surgery and the 2 to 4 week wait afterwards, but if she is biting him through the bars, the cages should be far enough apart so that doesn’t happen any more.

[Author]

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