Thumper & Nibbles

As you would expect, running Fairly Beloved Rabbit Care finds us in contact with many rabbit owners who have just given up entirely on their rabbit. No amount of support or advice from us can get them to change their mind: they've usually already given the rabbit away in their minds and its near impossible for us to change it back for them.

Occasionally though we do get to meet an owner who is desperate to make things work, but find they're at a loss as to what to do.

We've recently heard from a lady (let's call her Binky) who has four rabbits - two (male-female) happily bonded together and another two males (Thumper and Nibbles). The two males had been given to them by a family who no longer wanted them, and Binky thought she was doing the right thing by giving them a home.

However, Thumper & Nibbles weren't for pairing up. Binky has tried to bond them without success, and was now at the stage where she was asking for our help to rehome them as she just didn't have the space to provide three full rabbit environments with hutch, run etc to make life happy for them.

On discussing they're behavior my recommendation was to first have both boys neutered, to allow the hormones to settle and then for us to work with Binky to bond the two boys together. Binky qualifies for treatment with PDSA so we referred her to them for further advice on neutering.

A short while later I heard from Binky again who had been advised that neutering would cost £46 per rabbit through the PDSA, and she was not in a financial position to justify putting both boys through the op. We discussed further and our recommendation was that it would not be fair for us only to rehome one rabbit as it would leave the other in a permanent lonely situation, denying him of one of the most important rabbit needs - company.

The situation has now been left that it is likely that we will need to rehome both boys as neither Binky nor ourselves are in a position to cover the cost of both neutering operations.

All is not necessarily lost though, as you could help! If we were able to raise funds to cover one of the operations Binky is able to afford the other, allowing FBRC to work closely with Binky to bring the boys together into a happy pair united in the hutch and run setup Binky has available for them. We may even be able to bring the four rabbits together as a group longer term. A happy success story for all.

Binky says, "we do love the rabbits and dont really want to part with them, we have become attached to them, and when they are done it would be great to see all the 4 rabbits running around together as they all have their own characters".