Marathon Vs Slow and Steady Bonding

[lexi]

I’m getting prepared to bond my two neutered males, an english angora named Burt and holland lop named Kip. The lop is newly fixed, so I have a couple weeks to go. As far as my human schedule, I have a three day weekend and I’m tying to decide if I attempt to marathon bond that weekend or if I go the ten minutes a day route. 

Anyone done both? Recommendations? Or is this a question I should ask the bunny boys.

[Gina.Jenny]

I marathon bonded a boy and girl recently, it took 4 days, including sleeping 2 nights with them. I’m now steady bonding them with another pair to make a quartet, as I haven’t had the time to marathon bond the four, plus there have been more bunny issues to overcome, mainly hair cutting nips. It depends on the bunnies to some degree, if you put them together and they start fighting, marathon bonding is unlikely to work. So you will need to ask the bunnies, and it make take more than 3 days. Are you going to be home on the 4th,5th possibly 6th day? A newly bonded pair shouldn’t be left alone until you are certain of the bond. You can do more than 10 minutes a day the slower way, if the bunnies aren’t fighting, I did two sessions with the quartet yesterday that were both over half an hour, but there have needed to be short ones, bunnies moods can vary day to day, just as ours can.

[Azerane]

I don’t really think either is better, as mentioned above, they both have their place depending on the relationship between the rabbits. There is potential in the weeks leading up to do pre-bonding work such as scent and cage swapping etc. I’m assuming they can see each other through bars. I personally don’t feel marathon bonding should be jumped into as a first step, but I think it can be used once the initial short bonding sessions have given an assessment of how likely they are to bond, and I think they’re worthwhile in the fact that it’s not confusing for the rabbits, constantly going back and forth from being alone, to being with another bunny. On the other hand, the slow and steady approach allows each bunny to recover and have some space if they’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed from the experience.

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