daveoirl
Well-known member
Hi all,
As some of you may know, we have 10 week old Amie now since last Thursday. She is going great, very effectionate....extremely playful and a look that would melt a stone heart!
Anyway, we also have 2 house rabbits which are 1.5 years old and we will be hoping to have them on friendly terms with Amie over the course of the next few months. We have always let the rabbits out in the evening to run around our living room and dining room when we are there, and they really enjoy it. Since little Amie arrived we have had to wait until she is asleep to let them out, but we have also started to introduce them.
We started off just holding Amie near to there hutch, and she would stare intently at them, while the rabbits thumped the ground with their feet as a kind of warning.
After a couple of days of this we let Amie walk herself up to their hutch and smell them. The rabbits would run over to her and grunt/growl at her as a warning "This is our hutch, back off or face the consequences!!"
Amie would take no notice and try and paw at them through the cage and lick them!
Yesterday the rabbits were out and Amie was on my lap watching them. I decided to let her down and she walked over to the more dominant rabbit and smelled her. The rabbit smelled her back and then grunted at her, Amie backed off. Amie then went over to the more relaxed, submissive rabbit and smelled her, the rabbit just closed her eyes and ignored her.
Then she got more brazen, she ran at the dominant rabbit and pawed her behind! The rabbit ran away so Amie ran after her, at which point the rabbit turned around and ran back at her, jumped over her and in the process knocked her off her feet. She let out a little yelp and mommy and daddy picked her up and comforted her. We were worried she was hurt, but she is fine. She did learn a lesson though, and just sat on the ground watching the rabbits play for a bit, before slowly approaching them again to smell/lick them.
Anyway, we will realized that she is just a bit too hyper at the moment for the more relaxed rabbits and to not allow her to run at them, for fear that they will learn to not like her and she might be injured by them (she is very small, and the rabbits are about 3 times her size/weight).
Our goal is to have them become accustomed to each other, in the hope that when Amie gets a little bigger, and maybe has a bit more common sense they can interact in a way that they all don't find stressful.
So, thats the story up to now, sorry for the bore! If anyone else has any experiences similar to this, or advice I would love to hear about it!
PS: We had a jack Russell and rabbit become great friends before, they used to sun bathe in the garden together! We are hoping that Amie and our two rabbits become just as friendly.
As some of you may know, we have 10 week old Amie now since last Thursday. She is going great, very effectionate....extremely playful and a look that would melt a stone heart!
Anyway, we also have 2 house rabbits which are 1.5 years old and we will be hoping to have them on friendly terms with Amie over the course of the next few months. We have always let the rabbits out in the evening to run around our living room and dining room when we are there, and they really enjoy it. Since little Amie arrived we have had to wait until she is asleep to let them out, but we have also started to introduce them.
We started off just holding Amie near to there hutch, and she would stare intently at them, while the rabbits thumped the ground with their feet as a kind of warning.
After a couple of days of this we let Amie walk herself up to their hutch and smell them. The rabbits would run over to her and grunt/growl at her as a warning "This is our hutch, back off or face the consequences!!"
Amie would take no notice and try and paw at them through the cage and lick them!
Yesterday the rabbits were out and Amie was on my lap watching them. I decided to let her down and she walked over to the more dominant rabbit and smelled her. The rabbit smelled her back and then grunted at her, Amie backed off. Amie then went over to the more relaxed, submissive rabbit and smelled her, the rabbit just closed her eyes and ignored her.
Then she got more brazen, she ran at the dominant rabbit and pawed her behind! The rabbit ran away so Amie ran after her, at which point the rabbit turned around and ran back at her, jumped over her and in the process knocked her off her feet. She let out a little yelp and mommy and daddy picked her up and comforted her. We were worried she was hurt, but she is fine. She did learn a lesson though, and just sat on the ground watching the rabbits play for a bit, before slowly approaching them again to smell/lick them.
Anyway, we will realized that she is just a bit too hyper at the moment for the more relaxed rabbits and to not allow her to run at them, for fear that they will learn to not like her and she might be injured by them (she is very small, and the rabbits are about 3 times her size/weight).
Our goal is to have them become accustomed to each other, in the hope that when Amie gets a little bigger, and maybe has a bit more common sense they can interact in a way that they all don't find stressful.
So, thats the story up to now, sorry for the bore! If anyone else has any experiences similar to this, or advice I would love to hear about it!
PS: We had a jack Russell and rabbit become great friends before, they used to sun bathe in the garden together! We are hoping that Amie and our two rabbits become just as friendly.