Bonding Bunnies

Bunnies are social animals and they like to have friends, but they're particular about who their friends are. Experts say the easiest to "bond" are are a spayed female and a neutered male, though same sex partnerships are often successful too, especially when bunnies are brothers or sisters and are adopted together.

If you have a single bunny who needs a friend, take your bunny along when you look for a partner. My dwarf albino Charlie didn't like the little hotot who was his size at all and picked a part lop bunny twice his size.

I took Topsy along and she got along with several of the bunnies. I picked Quinn because he was both cuddly and assertive. But he'd just been neutered so I decided to keep them separate for awhile. It took more than a month before his first impulse was not to mount her. And they always started to fight. So I started putting them together for short periods every day and separating them before the fight started.

The standoff seemed to be who would groom who first. I could almost hear them saying, "OK, if you lick my nose, I'll lick yours!" Finally, yesterday I saw Topsy grooming Quinn and then a while later Quinn grooming Topsy and sure enough, now they're friends. I'm not quite ready to leave them alone together when I'm not here but clearly that's coming. Thanks goodness. I was worried there for awhile!