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Forum BONDING Bonding Mr. Bunny, Ms. Rabbit, and Cadbury

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    • FluffyBunny
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        So the official bonding hasn’t started yet, but since Cadbury is getting neutered this week I figured it’d be nice to start to journal the prebonding stuff, the same way I did for Mr. Bunny and Ms. Rabbit. 

        Here are the bunnies involved:

        No automatic alt text available.

        Sharing this very old pic because I think it describes their bunny-relationship pretty well.  This is Mr. Bunny (REW) and Ms. Rabbit (the agouti). Mr. Bunny is a 9 1/2 year old, neutered male. I adopted him in November of 2008. He’s a very strong, quick bunny, though he’s also very social. Ms. Rabbit is an 8 year old spayed female, and I adopted her in September of 2010. She’s completely blind due to cataracts that she developed at the age of 5. She is a feisty little girl who likes being held and carried. They’ve been bonded since 2010, and their bonding took me about two months. 


        This is the new boy Cadbury. I just got him last week. He is probably 3-4 months old, and he will be neutered as of tomorrow (hopefully). He’s a very fast, hyper little guy – as would be expected of a baby.  

        It’ll be about 3-4 weeks before I start bonding them, so I’ve started doing pre-bonding things already (after I treated little guy with ivermectin and washed him off a bit). All three of them happen to be shedding right now, so I’ve been adding a bit of fur from the other set of bunnies to each of their habitats, as well as adding a bit of poop to each others’ litter boxes. So far, they seem to be having no bad reaction to the scent of each other – which I figure is a good sign for the pair in particular.

        My current plan is to do the method that involves bonding each member of the old pair to the new bunny, then bonding all three together. I’m going with this method because Ms. Rabbit is a lot more frail than Mr. Bunny, and Mr. Bunny has a history of getting territorial. To prevent any aggression toward Ms. Rabbit, I will be introducing Mr. Bunny and Cadbury first, then Ms. Rabbit and Cadbury, then all three together. I also plan to let them occasionally see each other through cage bars as a group before the bonding starts – I did this while bonding Mr. Bunny and Ms. Rabbit and it seemed to work pretty well. 


      • Willow Lien
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          I am attempting bonding the same way, one at a time for the bonded pair then hopefully together. It is very slow going but I have quite some time yet before my baby can be spayed.


        • FluffyBunny
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            Do you have a bonding journal going, Willow Lien? I’d love to see how it works for you! How old is your younger one?

            Cadbury got neutered yesterday – surgery was very uneventful and he’s already back to normal. He’s also gone from 2.8 lbs when I found him to 3.9 lbs a WEEK later at the vet, so I guess I’m getting the big bunny I always wanted! He’s already almost bigger than Ms. Rabbit!

            The night before he was neutered, I let the old pair hop around the hallway his cage is in so that they could see each other through cage bars. Ms. Rabbit was mostly unfazed and laid back down to fall asleep. Cadbury stared at them wide-eyed for a few minutes, then went wild trying to get closer to them. Mr. Bunny spent a few minutes grunting and chinning everything, then started wildly mounting Ms. Rabbit. She didn’t seem too fazed by it, but I didn’t want them to get hurt, so I brought them out of the hallway. They laid back down and started licking each other afterwards.

            So I think, based on this, I can probably expect a lot of territorial/dominance behavior from Mr. Bunny. Fortunately, I think their bond is strong and old enough (knock on wood) that the pair won’t be messed up from the bonding. What Cadbury does when there’s no cage bars remains to be seen!

            I’ll probably continue letting them see each other a bit after Cadbury recovers. Then in maybe 3-4 weeks I will put them together in a bath tub to start off.


          • Willow Lien
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              I am keeping a bonding journal. I had a good session today with the girls, we did the face-to-face forced snuggle between my legs and it went great. I had never done that before and my daughter helps me (she’s an adult and also very good with the buns). I don’t feel like I can post my journal here because it seems to go against the general sentiment of how bonding *should* be. My rabbits are safe, healthy, and happy and I tend to have a way with animals and I have had many varieties! Horses, dogs, cats, hamsters, ferrets, birds, and varying experience with snakes, guinea pigs, sugar gliders, chickens, even a scorpion. LOL. Oh and rats.

              My new baby is of uncertain age. We were told she was 12-14 weeks when we got her but I think she was more like 8. She has not started pulling out fur or nesting, grunting, etc. but she is being a bit feisty sometimes, so puberty is probably not far. I think she is at most 4 months by now, at least 3.

              Another member warned me about disrupting a bonded pair with a third so I am glad I found out about that. I will do some research into that. I would have preferred a male for a third, but the baby was a rescue and not planned. I have the means/space to keep them separate forever if I need to. The baby just adores the other buns though, especially my boy. I have videos of her being all binky and him just sitting there like “you have GOT to be kidding me” LOL.


            • FluffyBunny
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                Oh, I know that feeling! This is honestly the only pet forum I can say I’ve been on where there aren’t any my-way-or-nothing pet care Nazis. I wouldn’t post a journal like this otherwise. Bad experiences myself with going against the general sentiment – on another rabbit forum, I was literally publicly used as an example of an irresponsible pet owner because I said trancing was alright sometimes. Whatever works for your individual animals and is compatible with your lifestyle is a good way to care for them!

                She sounds precious! It’s awesome that she is already so fond of your other buns, too. I think my Cadbury is liking the looks of the other bunnies, but I’m not sure if he wants to interact with them or just hump them at this point, lol. The forced snuggling sessions sound interesting. That’s kind of what I did when I was bonding Mr. Bunny and Ms. Rabbit. They started biting each other every time they were in a bigger space, so I would put them in a bucket barely bigger than they were. I haven’t seen a lot of folks use methods like that – most people use either pens or big bath tubs for bonding, it seems.

                I actually learned a ton about bonding methods volunteering for the HRS for 5 years. The HRS co-founder lady and the other one who did bonding usually just put trios/groups all together in a big pen. She would sit there with a heavy-duty squirt bottle and watch them like a hawk for about 6 hours, then head home if they didn’t fight. Basically, she skipped directly to the “cementing” process some people do at the end of bonding, after letting them work their own issues out for a while. The whole thing worked very well, but was the polar opposite of what almost all rabbit websites will tell you to do. I’d try it myself, but I have to deal with fragile elderly bunnies, so I’m sticking to the supervised bonding method.


              • Willow Lien
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                  That is good info FluffyBunny! Reading others’ experiences in real life versus bunny “theory” is what I like best.

                  I have decided to nix the bonding process for now as the baby is full into puberty at this point and OH SO hormonal. Fortunately, this makes her love her humans VERY much (maybe too much lol).


                • Bianca
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                    Good luck, I look forward to reading your journal! I am in a similar situation to you – I have a new rescue who was just neutered the other day. I plan to bond him to my pair once he has recovered. Pre-bonding is going well so far.


                  • FluffyBunny
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                      Lol Willow Lien…I hope you can get your little one spayed soon!

                      Bianca, I’m happy to hear your pre bonding is going nicely too. It sounds like we are in pretty much the same situation. I saw that you posted a journal a bit ago as well – will give it a read! Hopefully we’ll both have a nice trio in a few months!


                    • FluffyBunny
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                        I’ve let them see each other through cage bars for the last 2 days, now that Cadbury is mostly healed up. Mr. Bunny continues to take one whiff of Cadbury and immediately relentlessly mount Ms. Rabbit. Meanwhile, Ms. Rabbit seems to not really care about Cadbury, and she doesn’t respond negatively to the humping (though I think she gets tired of it when Mr. Bunny starts latching on with his teeth). I guess it could be worse – they could be aggressive toward each other, which they so far have not been – but I don’t want her worn out by the nonstop humping. I’m thinking that, until I put them together without cage bars in a couple of weeks, I’ll start just letting Mr. Bunny and Cadbury see each other. Ms. Rabbit and Cadbury seem to have no issue with each other at this point, and I’ll be bonding him with Mr. Bunny first anyway. Hopefully, just having Mr. Bunny get more used to Cadbury’s scent will cut down on the humpiness a bit.


                      • FluffyBunny
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                          Sorry for the lack of updates –

                          I started bonding Mr. Bunny and Cadbury about 1 1/2 weeks ago. That has been going extremely well. There was a bit of biting and lunging for the first little bit, but after the second session, they seemed to get more used to each other. As of the last two sessions, there has been plenty of mutual licking. Mr. Bunny’s main issue is that he gets very unsettled by how hyper Cadbury is – poor boy forgot he used to be the same way!

                          I also started doing sessions with Ms. Rabbit and Cadbury today. I was very pleasantly surprised. Ms. Rabbit say in one spot with her eyes closed and both ears trained on Cadbury while he jumped around the pen like a madman. Eventually, he got pretty worn out and laid next to her, demanding some licks. She licked his ears out very nicely and then they fell asleep together. No biting and no humping!

                          I’m thinking that tomorrow, I will put all three bunnies together in the small pen I’ve been bonding them in. They’re acting extremely nicely as pairs, so now I think I need to see how Mr. Bunny and Ms. Rabbit interact with Cadbury around. Overall, this is working out way nicer than I thought it would!


                        • FluffyBunny
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                            Small update on the trio –

                            They’ve had several sessions with all three bunnies since I posted last. I’ve started moving them into semi-neutral space, since there was minimal aggression in the neutral territory. Cadbury has started humping Ms. Rabbit very incessantly. Luckily, neither she nor Mr. Bunny seem to mind that – but I feel bad for the poor old girl! Besides that, I think they’re mainly just trying to learn to trust each other. Mr. Bunny in particular gets very unsettled by how active Cadbury is, and he’ll cling to me for the whole session if I sit in a pen with them, so I’m trying to not step in unless there’s a lot of biting.

                            I had to take both of them to the vet today – Ms. Rabbit to check on her eyes, and Mr. Bunny because he’d lost a good deal of weight. All seems good for the most part – Mr. Bunny’s exam and bloodwork were clean, no sign of cancers or kidney disease, so he likely just needs a high calorie diet. Ms. Rabbit is on two eye drops now, since she developed ulcers in both eyes. But they should be in good shape to continue bonding.

                            Tonight I am going to move them into a large semi-neutral room and see how they do. If there’s no major fighting, I may try to leave them together all night. I’d really like to get Cadbury out of his cage soon so he can be free run with the other bunnies.


                          • DanaNM
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                              Sounds like you have a good handle on things , just wanted to encourage you to make sure you have positive interactions between all three buns before moving to semi-neutral (rather than just an absence of aggression). 

                              This might be the case, but sounds like they are still building trust and establishing their hierarchy, so it’s important to remain patient in the final stages. Could you have them spend the night together in the neutral space? 

                              . . . The answers provided in this discussion are for general guideline purposes only. The information is not intended to diagnose or treat your pet. Seek the advice of your veterinarian or a qualified behaviorist.  

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                          Forum BONDING Bonding Mr. Bunny, Ms. Rabbit, and Cadbury