When I was researching bonding I read a lot that sometimes it takes weeks or months for rabbits to bond fully. I am wondering if that is what we are seeing with Odin and Freja - they have been living together now for 10 weeks but it has been a very slow process to expand their space without it sending Odin off into a wave of anxiety and humping. I think we spent about 8 weeks doing a little bit each week, but each time we had increased humping for 1-3 days. Doing a change of bedding this week (which was necessary as Odin was reacting to the previous bedding and the boxes were all collapsing so needed replaced) triggered humping almost like the first few days of bonding, though it settled day by day and now 3 days in he's mostly back to normal.
Freja is still very tolerant and has never reacted badly to him at all, she is adept at using the low spaces we have given her all over the place to brush him off, and is so good at reassuring him and grooming him, but the other day she was pretty fed up of him.
We have been using PetRemedy which does help, though not as much as initially, and also tried him with rescue remedy out of desperation which may have helped a little. It's not easy to find calming supplements for bunnies! I have also been giving them plenty of lemon balm for it's calming properties as they love that and don't like dried chamomile.
But is this still within normal? We are getting to know him, there are certain triggers, and certain times of day when he is worse, and most of the time when it seems to be him wanting her to groom but she hasn't finished eating (she's only 9 months and a giant so eats a lot more than him still) we can take over and "groom" him and he'll just go to sleep by her side until she is ready to take over.
He has lived on his own or only with a guinea pig all his life (but has a lot of scabs and scars in his ears so I'm not sure they were really friendly at all), and is about 18months now.
Are we still just going through the bonding process? Do you think we'll always have an anxious boy when small things change in the environment? It can be as simple as changing the litter tray, though I think we've finally found one big enough that they both like so that won't need to be done again.
Freja is still very tolerant and has never reacted badly to him at all, she is adept at using the low spaces we have given her all over the place to brush him off, and is so good at reassuring him and grooming him, but the other day she was pretty fed up of him.
We have been using PetRemedy which does help, though not as much as initially, and also tried him with rescue remedy out of desperation which may have helped a little. It's not easy to find calming supplements for bunnies! I have also been giving them plenty of lemon balm for it's calming properties as they love that and don't like dried chamomile.
But is this still within normal? We are getting to know him, there are certain triggers, and certain times of day when he is worse, and most of the time when it seems to be him wanting her to groom but she hasn't finished eating (she's only 9 months and a giant so eats a lot more than him still) we can take over and "groom" him and he'll just go to sleep by her side until she is ready to take over.
He has lived on his own or only with a guinea pig all his life (but has a lot of scabs and scars in his ears so I'm not sure they were really friendly at all), and is about 18months now.
Are we still just going through the bonding process? Do you think we'll always have an anxious boy when small things change in the environment? It can be as simple as changing the litter tray, though I think we've finally found one big enough that they both like so that won't need to be done again.
