I have an unspayed doe and a neutered buck, each living in separate rooms (until the pens I ordered three weeks ago turn up, if they ever do :roll: ), and I am out of the house from 7am until 8pm.
The rooms they live in are huge and strewn with toys and furniture, but of course I'm always worried I don't get to spend enough time with them, as every attempt placing them together at present ends up with King chasing poor Sharik (she is 3 times larger than him, so it is a bit comical actually) around the area they are enclosed in.
I do the following: I wake up at 6, open the door to the living room and King immediately bounces out and does a run of the flat, of course not into Sharik's room - while he runs, I change his water and feed him, and once he jumps into his cage to eat, I shut the door, open the door to Sharik's room and repeat the process. King is fine being in a cage as long as he is eating. Sharik has been with me the longest so I can't really exclude her from the living room altogether, so this works reasnably well for now.
Then I get ready for work, give them both a bit of a cuddle, say 5 mintues each, and when I leave the flat, they are almost always settled in for a snooze.
At 8pm I come back, repeat the feeding process, then I eat myself, and divide the living room into two areas, carry Sharik's litter tray in, and spend 3 - 4 hours with them in the living room, while I finish off some work, watch a film, play poker online, speak on the phone, surf the Internet etc., and of course play with the buns.
Sharik is a snugglebun, and would basically accept head rubs for hours on end, and frequently sits on my lap also. King is more of a free spirit, but also needs his head rubs, and I do feel sometimes that they are not happy when I switch sides of the divider and give the other bun attention. By default because King can amuse himself for over an hour with a new empty toilet roll, Sharik gets a lot more cuddles, but I try to sit an equal amount of time on each side of the divider, or switch the buns around. I measure my buns happiness in binkies and flops, and as long as King binkies and does the Bunny-500, and Sharik flops after every session, I think I'm doing OK. They are both big tooth purrers too
In the weekends, I try to get more time with them, but any attempt at approaching Sharik before 6pm results in hisses and honks, and King just disapepars behind the arm chair, so it's really only from 6pm I get any kind of response :roll:
As soon as the pen set-up arrives, I will have them both living in the same room - this means less space for each bun, but still plenty to exercise, and I think this is a necessity as not only will they get used to each other, but also they won't be alone - even if they're not bonded they do show a lot of itnerest in each other, and I think just having another furry around will be calming.
It might sound like a lot of work, but the truth is I really, really love my buns, and enjoy spending time with them.
EDIT: I should probably add that the only damage King has evener done is to pull down some wallpaper which means I can trust him in the living room unsupervised, whereas unfortunately, I don't trust Sharik for a second :lol: