Rowan wrote:
...One thing it might be worth checking after a comment you madeyesterday is that Hettie really is a girl. Pet shops are notorious formaking mistakes and even experienced people can get it wrong. Hopefullyshe is.
Good golly, Kate! How right you are. It is so basic, yet no one picked that point up heretofore.
We tried to bond Ernest to our doe, Mitzie, with no successfor about three weeks until we received "his" neutering papers from"his" previous owner, only to find out "he' had received anoviohysterectomy and thus became Ernestine right then and there.
As a three year old, who had been fixed by his owners, who believed himto be a buck for some reason, we never thought to verify it by lookingand accepted the owner's word at face value.
When we did look, we disagreed about her sex and needed expert andcostly professional opinion to settle the argument conclusively.
The fact she was a doe, unbeknownst to us, would account for thedifficulty in affecting a bonding between her and our otherdoe. Not that it can not be done, just that it would be moredifficult than if between a buck and doe.
Black_Jack....bonding occurs most easily between buck anddoe, doe and doe, buck and buck, in that descending rank orderofsuccess. Some people maintain that all rabbitscan be bonded provided one uses the proper techniques , make the effortand has the patience to draw the process to a successful conclusion.
Others claim there are simply some individual rabbits who will not bondwith some other individual rabbits regardless of what you do.We happen to adhere to that point of view, but will be the first toadmit we don't have the patience to work at the process for more thanthree weeks for any particular pair.
We have two does, who came to us as bonded siblings. We sentthem both out at the same time to be spayed and they were necessarilyseparated for the procedures. We kept them separated one moreday upon return home. We when placed them together again,they began to fight viciously, never to assume their bonded roles again.
I am at a loss to explain why Jack and Hetty were fine for a day ortwo, then NOT. All it would take would be a littledisagreement, that blew up into a major altercation. It couldbe hormonal as she is not spayed, right? It could besomething like I described in the paragraph above. It isoften difficult to understand and explain rabbit motivation,I am afraid.
One of the best sites for explaining the hows and whys of rabbitcommunication is
The Language of Lagomorphs. It mightgive you some clues as to what is occurring between Jack andHetty. The link is available in
A Cheat Sheet for RabbitCare on the contents/subject window, but I will insert it here inorder to make it easier for you to access.
http://www.muridae.com/rabbits/rabbittalk.html
Buck