Bonding scared blind elderly bunny - advice wanted

Hi, I am new here and have a question about bonding. I have read around alot on the internet as I have been undertaking bunny bonding for the first time. I want to undertake the bonding myself as one of the rabbits I am trying to bond is 13 years old and half blind. I figure here I can look after him better and he is in a familiar surrounding. I'll give you a bit of background. I started the year with four lovely bunnies. An elderly couple and a separate mother and daughter pair. Unfortunately my lovely chinchilla dwarf lop who we had for thirteen years passed away naturally in the spring, leaving a very lovely but lonely minilop behind. I have been trying to give him lots of attention but I work full time and as he has since developed a cataract and gone blind in one eye, he spends alot of time by the hutch window looking lonely. In the heat wave in August my mother and daughter pair fell out. They were originally part of a trio, but the boy unfortunately passed away quite a long time ago. I had been worried about them fighting for a while as I had found fur on the hutch floor on a few occasions. On one hot day they properly fell out, resulting in the mother going into GI statis but luckily rescued by amazing work at the vets. I now have three single bunnies, one of which is currently being temporarily looked after by my family. This is clearly not ideal, for them or me. I do not want to rebond the female pair as I believe a male and female bond is stronger, and they never really seemed very affectionate with each other and did not have a proper bunny bond. I tried first to bond the mother to my lovely old boy taking the slow method where they get used to each other through mesh as my aim is to protect him from these younger, very energetic women. Unfortunately she seemed to take a dislike to him and kept trying to bite him through the mesh so I decided it wasn't worth risking it. I have since been trying with the daughter. Things went well with the mesh in between they seemed either to ignore each other or to try to sniff each other through the mesh. I then tried letting them loose with each other and this is where I need help. Things went fine, in the sense that my worse fear was she would try to fight him, him being blind and old not really having a chance. Instead she seems to quite like him. She either ignores him, chases him or mounts him. Trying to be dominant clearly but nothing aggressive in it. She even came and laid down next to him once. The problem is he seems to be fine, until she is near him then he either runs away (even before she gets close) or freezes scared. When they were side by side in the mesh he would actively come up to her and seemed quite interested but now he just seems scared. A few times she has made him jump by coming up on his blind side and of course I think the mounting did not help but he is clearly scared of her now. The aim of this was to find him nice company so obviously I feel at the moment it is not working and I should just give up. But I would value anyone's opinion who would like to give it. Has anyone else experienced a situation like this? Obviously it would be convenient for me to bond up the bunnies I already have but there is no point at all of doing that if it is going to make their lives worse. But I have so little experience of how you help bunnies to fall in love so maybe their is hope yet...

Hi and welcome to the forum :wave: I have not had experience of this type of situation and so cannot provide any advice. There are quite a few forum members who are experienced in rabbit bonding and hopefully they will be along soon to help.

What I would say is that you must be providing excellent rabbit care as your rabbits are living to such fantastic ages

Sending you best wishes and I hope that you can sort something out.

Welcome :wave:

I shall be in touch shortly

wow - as Omi says you're obviously providing excellent care to have such long living bunnies. I'm sorry to hear about your recent predicament but can totally appreciate why you'd want to bond an elderly, visually impaired rabbit.

I've never had bunnies meet behind bars but have heard it said many times that this is not indicative of how they'll react face to face. Its quite normal for the submissive bun to act scared isn't it but I too would feel anxious given age & vulnerability. How long have they been together?

Hi everyone, thanks for making me feel welcome!

I started trying to bond them in the summer first just swapping scent. Then when I went on holiday they lived at a friend who was able to put them in some indoor cages side by side. I live in rented accommodation and the rabbits are not allowed in the house so this was there longest continuous stretch together. After this we began a period of putting them in the run side by side, then eventually in the run together. I understand that the above is not optimal but it was the best I could do. Whenever they were together separated by mesh they both seemed either to ignore each other or interested in each other. But when they can both directly interact, my old boy just suddenly gets scared and it is getting worse. Now the weather is cold and terrible, I cannot put them together so regularly and have kinda paused perhaps for winter at least. I guess what I would like to know is, has anyone had the submissive bunny acting scared before and did it lead to a successful bond in the end? Can anyone think of anything I can do to make him feel more relaxed? He seemed very interested in her when there was mesh inbetween. I was expecting fighting but thankfully there has been no nipping at all. Only a bit of humping and him acting terrified.

I would imagine that although your rabbit is blind he will be able to pick up the vibes from the female bunny. Rabbits sometimes bully one with a weakness so it'sreally difficult to predict what might happen if they were together. Could I be nosey and ask what diet you have your rabbits on as they live to a great age?

Hi and welcome to the forum. I have done some bonding and the only advice I can offer is that sometimes it takes a while but it's worth it. I did the 'getting them used to each other' method of putting them near each other, swapping hay etc which did work.
Anyway there are some really great experts on here so I'll leave them to post, good luck anyway, your story is very moving and I hope you succeed. You are obviously a very caring person x