Help needed... Catch 22

Hi all,

I hope you can help and offer some advise. There are plenty of threads on here about bonding and I can't explain the amount I have read about bonding etc. But I stuck... In a catch 22 situation I feel.

Noah my eight month old male was on his own so after getting him neutered we waited a few months and thought it was time to get him a little girlfriend. Well we got beau two weeks and Noah seems to just hate her. The catch 22 is we keep trying to bond them together however it seems scary when Noah seems to get aggressive. We have tried the oven gloves, water spray so it ends up with a scared beau and a soaking wet Noah. I don't want beau to keep getting scared because she looks petrified everytime. After a date on Sunday beau has a little bite mark just above her nose :-( we have been bathing this so it doesnt get infected. So even more we don't want to put them together.

Could it be possible that Noah just liked being the "only rabbit". We can't have beau getting scared all the time, it's a very stressful and sad thing to see.

Please bear in mind beau is not spayed and there is a bit of a size difference.

Hope you can help.

Posted in wrong forum.... Sorry

Welcome to the forum! RU is great! Well done for getting your boy a friend

The size difference won't matter but Beau needs to be spayed and recover before you should attempt bonding.

After that, it needs to be small, completely neutral territory, like an indoor cage or run where they should be left together (unless fighting) monitored round the clock if possible.

She is four months at the moment, when is best to get her done?

Should there be no contact at all then? Does beau give off something that makes Noah angry towards her? Sorry to sound really stupid.

Noahbeau said:

She is four months at the moment, when is best to get her done?

Should there be no contact at all then? Does beau give off something that makes Noah angry towards her? Sorry to sound really stupid.

Click to expand...

You don't sound stupid at all The problem is as she gets older she will become territorial and possibly aggressive - it's just her hormones, getting her spayed should prevent this, plus does are highly susceptible to uterine cancer, spaying also prevents this.

As there has already been some aggression I would be tempted to keep them separate, get her spayed and then wait until she has recovered. I believe they can be spayed from 6 months, although I may have remembered that wrong.

Part of me feels like she needs to get territorial and get a bit aggressive and stand up for herself as she just takes it from him. Obviously we won't be putting them together for the time being... I just really get the vibe Noah isn't happy... He's even been grunting and turned a bit against us and he's never ever been like that

if she gets aggressive and turns on him, then you will have next to nil chance of getting them together as they will then just both lunge at each other and the fight will be much much worse then it is now.

I had a problem where my rabbit attacked his girlfriend on first meeting, so since then I kept her in the run and him running around. He got sprayed if he attacked her in the cage or if that didn't work he had a time out, where he would be back in his cage for a while and I did that everytime he tried to attack her through the bars. Eventually he ignored her and I moved her run around the garden. I can't remember how long it was after that, but the wind knocked the door of the run open and they both were in the garden at opposite ends. If she came near him, he'd chase her off, but would only be short lived and he'd go back to eating grass.

Eventually with putting them at opposite ends of the garden everyday they got closer and closer until they bonded themselves.

Not sure if this would help, but that's my experience.

Did you put them on neutral ground when you put them together? The boy is being territorial because it is his space and hence his behaviour. Tou could put in cages next to one another, that might help, until you get the girl spayed at around 5 months. You need to ask your vet. When she has been neutered she needs 3 - 8 weeks to recover, depending on how hormonal she is, then you can try putting buns together, but it must be in an area where neither has been before. You can use a small area or a bigger one. When the time comes let us know how things are going. Make sure your girl is a girl.