Bonding- Two Bunnies + A Third. Part Une

We have successfully bonded our two rabbits and we’re working on bonding our third.

I’ll give you some tips we picked up along the way and I’ll share some of the standard bonding procedure in the bunny community, but I will also explore the benefits and deficits of those techniques. More importantly I want you to have a play-by-play of our experience with a difficult bond, which is something I haven’t really seen on any other blogs. I will contribute this in part two of this series, which is forthcoming.

For now, I would like to concentrate on our first, very simple, bonding process, between Alfred and Gorie.

For Alfred and Gorie, we used pretty standard bonding techniques. Here’s an idea why our process was so simple: First, Gorie was lonely. She was our first baby, and we’d had her for almost a year since she was a tiny kit. When we went to work in the morning or to bed at night, we’d find her waiting at the door for us when we came home or woke up, sort of like a lonely little puppy. She was desperate for attention and a super confident woman-about-town from the loving affection she regularly received at home. So, Gorie was very open to a bunny friend. This was very clear when we took her for bonding sessions at the shelter, where she was playful and curious even with aggressive or scary or depressing bunnies.

Secondly, Alfred was open for a bond because he had just lost his bond-mate, Canterfloss. She didn’t die, but they were stuck together un-neutered for far too long and he humped her into a catatonic state to the point where she actually couldn’t be in the room with male rabbits anymore. That is not a joke, please spay and neuter your pets lest they become sex beasts like Alfred was.

So, after Alfred’s neutering he was super lonely and when a pretty little thing like Gorie came around, he was absolutely ready to bond. The moral of this story is that it’s really helpful to ask about your future bunny’s history, habits, and personality before you start the bonding session.

Here are some Tips for Preparation Before the Bonding Session:

1. So, first and foremost: all bunnies must be neutered and/or spayed. Seriously. Unless the two were babies together and have lived their entire lives without separation, un-fixed rabbits together will end in flying fur and bloodshed. It’s not worth the effort, just get them fixed. Some people will suggest bonding them just after the fix so they can heal together, but I just can’t suggest that in good conscience. Between pulling at each other’s stitches or fighting while they’re wounded, the risks are just too great. It might work well, and it also might work extremely badly with very expensive vet bills. Just be patient.

2. Patience…. PATIENCE. Bonding rabbits has the potential to take, like, forever. Like, months. You need to make sure that you’re equipped to house the bunnies separately if need be, and do not adopt a rabbit that you are unprepared to house if they do not bond immediately. If you return a bunny to a shelter, I will personally find you, cook you, and eat you.

3. Research. What works for one pair of buns may not work for another (as we are personally discovering to our dismay), and so you need a variety of options. Bunnies are very free-spirited individuals. Do no let any self-professed bunny expert bully you into doing something for your rabbits that you don’t feel good about. Take it from my personal experience.

When we were considering bringing a new bunny home, we went out and bought a new blanket, some rugs, a new litter box, and some new toys, etc. for him. We wanted him to have a safe space in our home and to have his own stuff to smell up with his stank. We laid all that out for him, and, dutifully following the instructions of online bunny forums, we separated his bunny area from Gorie’s bunny area with a fence. They both had ample room to run and play and neither had more room than the other. Great.

So we put Gorie in her carrier and brought her to the shelter. Most shelters that house bunnies will have adoption events where you can match your bunny with their bunnies on little speed-dates, or you can go to the shelter and have their play dates there. Do not try to do this in a pet store unless it’s hosting an adoption event with shelter workers. Their rabbits are not neutered, and they usually have no idea what they’re doing. You really have to adopt, unless you’re handed an orphaned bunny under some unexpected circumstances. If that’s the case, I suggest getting him or her neutered immediately, and then waiting to bond for at least three months. First, for the rabbit to heal from the surgery, and secondly, for the rabbit to become acquainted with you and learn to trust you. This trust is a vital component in the bonding sessions.

Now, during adoption events, it’s okay to pick the bunnies you find cutest and try and match your little one with them, although it will annoy shelter workers if you just pick the tiny little white dwarfs constantly because it’s really more important for the animals to get along. Then ask the shelter workers about each one’s history and personality and try to make an intelligent judgement. If your rabbit doesn’t get along with your favorite shelter bunny, don’t push it. Don’t take home a bunny that will be a difficult bond, you will really regret it later. This is where the patience comes in.

What to look for in a potential bond-mate.

If the bunnies look like they’re ignoring each other during the bond, that’s a good sign. If they’re cautiously sniffing, that could be a good sign. If there’s a little bit of chasing and some mounting, that could also be okay, depending on the level of aggression you sense. If they’re cuddling and grooming, that could be wonderful but please do not get lured into a false sense of security. If a bunny feels suffocated by an aggressively friendly partner, it could get ugly quickly.

Also, try to pick a rabbit of the opposite sex as your own. This isn’t because rabbits become married couples or lovers, but just because they won’t have a natural tendency to compete as much with a rabbit of a different sex. It’s definitely not impossible to bond two bunnies of the same sex, but it can be more difficult.

In my limited experience, if the bunnies are mainly ignoring each other with a little bit of chasing around it’s the best recipe for an easy bond. With Gorie and Alfred, Gorie was curious but hesitant. With the other rabbits, she was outgoing and playful but Alfie made her a little bit more subdued. He was extremely interested in her, and chased her a bit, lightly, although he wasn’t exactly trying to catch her. They were establishing a hierarchy: I chase, you run. If Gorie had stood her ground against him, it might have been aggressive.

Here I will begin to outline our techniques and some mistakes that just happened to work out well for these particular rabbits, along with other options. I’ll try to be as thorough as possible. Alfred and Gorie were bonded within a week and we’ve never had any problems with them since, six months later.

A) We allowed Alfred to have a run in the bunny area, alone, to leave his scent there for Gorie. This established Alfred’s place in the bunny area and made the space slightly more neutral for both bunnies.

B) For the first night, Alfred was in a separate room. We brought him home and set up a small pen in our bedroom. This served two functions: so that Gorie didn’t get frustrated with him invading on her space right away, and so that he could familiarize himself with us. Sometimes I regret only having him with us for the one night, because it took a long while after that to get him to trust us fully, even after he bonded with Gorie. I really suggest keeping the bunnies separated for a longer amount of time so that the new one can adjust properly and learn to trust you, as well as adjusting for any changes in diet or schedule.

C) We (accidentally) stress bonded* them immediately. Alfie’s adoption took a bit longer than usual because we had to wait for him to be cleared by a vet. He has a slight medical condition that needed to be addressed. When we finally could pick him up, it was on a day that we happened to have a few friends over, who wanted to meet the new baby. So we brought him out into the main room of the apartment, which happens to be Gorie’s room. With several people standing around and chatting and petting them, Gorie and Alfie were so concerned with the stress that they didn’t fight.

*Stress Bonding is a technique wherein you create an artificially stressful environment for the bunnies during bonding sessions. Some people run vacuums or put them in an empty bathtub together, but I personally do not suggest this technique unless under the most dire of circumstances. I don’t ever recommend stressing your rabbits unnecessarily. They are already such nervous animals and scaring them is a good way to take a few years off of their lives.

D) We put them in two separate pens, right next to each other. One had all of Gorie’s stuff, and one had Alfred’s new stuff, but we basically split Gorie’s territory in half. Under other circumstances, this would be a mistake. Rabbits are territorial, and I honestly believe that if Alfie weren’t so gentle and slightly handicapped, Gorie would have been very aggressive to a newcomer in her territory, especially since it was halved. With most rabbits, I really don’t recommend having them next to each other all day long. They watch each other and become nervous, and it can really inhibit the bonding process with sensitive rabbits.

E) We removed the gate between them for longer amounts of time, but never secured the gate. To bond them, we didn’t use a neutral area. We simply removed the gate between them and let them play together. If we sensed the playtime was stressful, we put the gate back up. But with Alfred and Gorie, it was rarely stressful. We really let them run wild for long periods of time, only separating them if we had to leave the room, or for even more arbitrary reasons. At this time with our work schedules, one of us was always home all day, so that made it easier.

During the night, we would be sure to separate them back into their two pens side-by-side, but Gorie would more often than not Shawshank Redemption her side of the gate to be with Alfred. I can’t stress enough how bad that could have been. They could have really hurt each other if they had fought at all. Please secure your gates.

If you’ve done your research and you decide to go this route, please do not keep bunnies in cages cooped up right next to each other. They will get nervous and aggressive and emotionally suffocated. If you must put the rabbits next to each other, use puppy pens so they can move freely. We used one puppy pen as a divider, but we really should have used two puppy pens tied together with empty water bottles or wood pieces stuck between them so that there’s maybe three inches of space between the two pens (this is so that they can’t stick their noses through the bars and bite each other, which they will absolutely do. It seems stupid, like, why would they do that? But they do it.) But again, I really don’t recommend putting your rabbits next to each other like this for any extended period of time. It generally makes them nervous.

So that was Gorie and Alfred’s bond. We had them together, for longer and longer each day when we didn’t sense any friction or aggression or stress, until finally we were comfortable letting them be overnight. But this is not the case with all bunny bonds, and we discovered that when we adopted Ivy.

We adopted Ivy about three months after we adopted Alfred. Gorie and Alfred were totally inseparable, cuddling ad nauseam constantly. Bunnies are not like married couples: two, three, four, etc. are perfectly capable of bonding, much as they do in multiples in the wild. As much as we like to personify our pets, bunnies do not mate for life in the wild so they have no reason for doing so in your living room. However, the bonding is not always an easy process, especially with two girls in the mix.

We took Gorie and Alfie to a big adoption event just after Easter, when all the little Easter bunnies that parents got their children as pets get abandoned in the shelter. We picked Ivy because she snuggled up with Alfie and Gorie in the litter box in a snuggly little nest. They were very close and intimate, and that proved to be slightly problematic down the road when Gorie wanted her space and began to fight Ivy.

Fighting Bunnies

Contrary to what you might feel, some bunnies really do just need to fight it out for dominance. They growl and nip and scratch. Sometimes, you need to let the bunnies fight. Really only pull them apart if it gets especially violent or it’s constant and unrelenting. Just keep in mind that you should not separate them immediately after a small tiff, because then they learn that to get out of bonding, they just have to fight.

Some bunnies need to chase each other around a little. Again, only separate them if one of them seems especially frightened or disturbed.

Some bunnies need to hump their partner to establish dominance: this mounting could be male-female, female-male, male-male, or female-female. It’s a hierarchy.

You may think my advice is vague, but honestly each bunny is extremely individual. Get to know your own bunny’s body language and behavior signals to better aid them in the bonding process.

Building Trust

What we didn’t take into account with Ivy is her history. Ivy had been abandoned at the shelter twice in her short life. She had been adopted six months earlier and abandoned again after her owner neglected her. She wasn’t properly adjusted to human company, and had trust issues with people. I picked up on this when a shelter worker said that she’ll only come near you when you pretend to ignore her, and she’s very shy and hesitant even with the workers who care for her daily. The issue was that I didn’t know exactly how to handle the situation.

When we brought Ivy home, we attempted to do as we did with Alfie, putting her in a separate room. Then a shelter worker came to our apartment to give us some toys that we’d won at the adoption center, and scolded us into putting the pens right next to each other right away.

That was a big mistake. Without getting accustomed to the humans first, Ivy was nervous and irritable. She didn’t like being watched all day by these strange new rabbits, and she stopped eating and didn’t poop or pee that much at all. She started growling at our hands or pouncing on us when we would come near. She was nervous and unhappy.

Neutral Space

The shelter worker also insisted that we use a separate, neutral space for the bonding sessions. A neutral space is fine to use, so long as you have it… but the issue with using a space that’s distinctly apart from the bunny’s normal habitat is that:

First, you have to handle the rabbit every time you go for a bonding session. You either have to pick the bunny up or place it in a carrier and physically move it. This begins the entire session on a stressful note, because bunnies historically do not like to be handled.

Secondly, the rabbit then has no means of escape or retreat from the new bunny. If you want to try and force a quick bond, I guess this stressful process might work, but it depends on your rabbits’ personalities. I strongly recommend the slow, less stressful route for most rabbits.

As in the case of Gorie and Alfred, I suggest letting both buns have a good run around whatever space you intend to use so that both their scents are mingled, and I suggest the space be between their two separate areas so that they can easily get from one place to another, with an opened door or gate.

For instance, if you have two rooms separated by a hallway, the hallway could be the neutral space and the two rooms could be each individual bunny’s area. I realize that not everyone has the luxury of so much space, but the idea is there. Two clearly separate spaces, with a neutral space in between. It’s important that each individual bunny space is hallowed ground, though, so don’t allow one rabbit to intrude on the other’s room. It’s only in the neutral space that they can be together.

We ultimately made the decision that Ivy needed some time to get to know us better. We separated her completely in another room, our bedroom. (Some people might say that this will make the other rabbits jealous, and I agree, that could be a problem. Fortunately our bedroom is not visible to the other rabbits and so they can’t see that she is living with us. Alfred seems perfectly fine with it, but Gorie definitely smells her on me and has been giving me a slightly cold shoulder for some time now.)

However, for Ivy, the change is incredible. She went from an aggressive, nervous, nasty little thing to the sweetest most cuddly rabbit you’ve ever seen. She lets us sleep all night, then wakes us up at breakfast time for a good long cuddle. She touches nose-to-nose in a little bunny greeting and no longer growls or grumps about us reaching down to pet her.

Our bedroom, where Ivy stays, is separated by a long hallway from another bedroom, where Alfred and Gorie stay. We have restarted the process of bonding Ivy, Alfred, and Gorie, and it is going infinitely better this time, aided infinitely by the fact that Ivy now trusts us.

Part Deux of this article will be a detail of the bonding technique we are using for the three of them, and a daily play-by-play of the progress. Stay tuned.