Hello! Brittney here, the mother of our two bunnies, Lucy & Castiel. Both my fiancé and I are first time rabbit owners so any and all suggestions/input is helpful!
Lucy & Castiel had/have been bonded for close to a year now. The bonding process was easy with them, and we followed a bonding blog by “the bunny chick” which led us to try an overnight power bonding session. This worked great and they were happily together ever since!
There have been a few changes to their habitat recently and we are concerned that because of this, it has caused them to either “breakup” or it has shuffled up their dynamic enough that we need to step in. Last month my fiancé and I moved and the rabbits got their own room rather than their previous set-up, which was free range of our condo. We transitioned them slowly and there were no issues. However, we have a border collie puppy that loves the company of the bunnies and the three will frequently squish/flop on opposite sides of the baby-gate together. Because of this, we decided to build them a large NIC cube condo for safety reasons – we didn’t want one of the bunnies to jump the gate and have our puppy think they were toys.
We are concerned that we gave them too much new territory too soon, as this is where things went downhill. While they still spent a large portion of their day flopped together, grooming each other, etc., we would wake up every single night to Castiel chasing Lucy around. There were no confrontational fights, blood, or anything like that – strictly chasing and fur pulling. We called our vet and she said to separate them and that the chance of them re-bonding was slim. We are not ready to give up, so we would appreciate all of your ideas!
So far we split their original condo and have been switching them every day, but they spend majority of their day either flopped together through the fence or digging at the flooring to get over to the other side (it is heartbreaking to watch). We have a large Tupperware we have been using for bonding dates throughout the day and it has always gone fine. Lucy will hump Castiel for a few seconds and then they go straight to cuddling, grooming, etc.
Now, our biggest question – what to do next? I have had them next to me for the last 24 hours in a large Tupperware and after the initial humping/scuffles, they just did the typical loving things bonded pairs do. With the holidays coming up we are hesitant to slowly transition them to a X-pen size enclosure, and then finally a permanent condo. We are going to be gone a lot and for a few days, we were only going to be coming back about twice a day to tend to the rabbits. Would it be better to bring a small enclosure with us to watch them in, or keep them in separate enclosures as we previously did that allowed them to interact through the fence? We are hesitant to allow them unsupervised interaction, as we do not know where they will be in the next few days, but do not want to hinder the re-bonding process.
Sorry for the lengthy response, I wanted to make sure I included as much detail as I could. Thank you all so much for any help/advice you can offer!