what to do? Bonding help

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banditcuster

Bunny Mom
Joined
Mar 17, 2014
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Houghton, MI
okay so about two months or so ago, I got my first rabbit, and got him fixed. My boyfriend has two fixed rabbits. Daisy (f) and Oreo (M).

With moving into our new place at the beginning of this month, we have started the bonding process. We have the buns in a play pen cage set up with a divider. They both have their litter boxes and the bottom of their cages are set up next to the divider, and have their hay rack, and their water/food bowls in this area as well.

Daisy is compeletely fine being around my rabbit, after the first "bonding" experince (tossed in a bin cage carrier together and rode in the back of a trailer to our new house.... <.<) and she will let him mount her and what not. Our problem comes with Oreo the other male. They were fine in the bonding bin cage, and in our first stroller walk we did with all three of them.

only really issue they really have together at first was that neither wanted to back down when they try to be the dominate one. This just turns into them trying to bite each other. I am worried about putting them together again since now I can't even get them into the stroller or anything else for that matter without them trying to attack each other asap.... I built a 1x1x1 nic cage (well each space is 1x1 size) that i can put the boys together and Oreo still dive bombs the barrier and diggs at it trying to get at Puff.

I know it can take a while for buns to like each other, but having it escalating to them waning to go after each other as soon as they have to be close together.

We have a hutch we want to build them, which if needed can be built to be to separate hutches.

Any suggestions on things I can do to see if Oreo and my bun (Puff) can learn to be buddies....
 
I'm afraid you are fighting nature. Trios can be quite difficult, but even moreso when there are 2 males. Usually it is more possible with either 3 females, or 1 male with 2 females. But the 2 males will likely fight over the female. If they have already come to blows, then it doesn't sound too possible that this will work out.

I also tried to bond a trio once. In my case, I had the female already. The two males were brothers from a rescue and while they weren't technically bonded (weren't sharing a cage at the rescue), they did get along without any problems. I watched as the 3 vied for dominance. It seemed to be going positively for a few weeks until the males began to get more and more aggressive towards each other. By the time fur was flying, I decided not to force it. In the end, we kept one boy with my girl.

That was my experience. I had been determined to make it work. However every bit of advice I had read and received told me that it wouldn't work with 2 males.

If you still want to give it another go, I'd suggest keeping them apart for the next month (totally apart) in hopes that they will 'forget' their past disagreements. Maybe, just maybe, they will be more receptive after they've had some time apart.
 

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