lonely rabbit

[twinmummy24]

one of my 2 year old male rabbits died very suddenly yesterday, completely unexpected as he appeared totally fine the day before
i am really worried about his brother though, i have taken both to the vets, one obviously to be cremated and to get the other checked over, he is running a temp so is now on antibiotics and the vet wonders if an infection is was finished off the other one.
my other concern is that bert is understandable lost without his brother, not eating much, although obviously this could be because he is unwell, looking for ernie in the run and hutch and generally looking very sorry for himself.

just wondered if any one else had experience of this, is it a good idea to try and find bert a new companion or would they fight, he is currently in an outdoor run as the weather is warm but we have an inside one for bad weather so was may be thinking of bringing him in until he settles? not really sure what to do,

thanks for any advice it would be greatly appreciated.

yeah this happened to us. we had a brother and sister pair and sadly one died last year from an impaction in his gut. his sister was really lonely without him.

we had her spayed, and then got another little boy rabbit and introduced them. it isn't always as hard as you think. i've read a LOT of successful bonding stories.
you may be best with a female as I think boy/girl pairs are less likely to fight, but obviously you would need to spay/neuter one/both of them!

we introduced ours somewhere totally neutral where neither had been before (spare room).
first we kept the newbie in our indoor cage and just let Rosie sniff around and let them get used to each other.
then we opened the cage and I stood by close with a big towel ready to go in and separate them if they started to fight but they were fine!

so we just did that for a couple of days. introducing them and letting them play together.
then we put the new rabbit outside with Rosie, but again stood by ready to break up a fight if she decided she didn't want him in HER run, but thankfully it all went well

that said, we were fully prepared to have another hutch and run if they hadn't bonded

I agree with thisisyesterday although my bonding attempt was not successful. If you have no room to house two rabbits who turn out to hate each other, it would be worth going to a rescue centre and negotiating a return if the bonding doesn't work. They'll be interested in the welfare of the animal and are likely to accept it back again, whereas a pet shop might not. We did this and although we tried hard, we knew that the rabbit could be return if it didn't work out.

Another point is to speak to your vet about how long you should wait after your rabbit comes off medication before introducing another one to make quite sure that it's not harbouring an infection. Otherwise, you'll be back to square one in no time with a different lonely rabbit! You'll need to thoroughly disinfect the hutch/run in case of infection too.

Good luck with it. We're back to having the one bunny for now - can't decide whether to try again with girlfriend number two. My poor bun's still got the bald patches from his last disastrous date!

we took our rabbit with us to the rescue centre we put them intogether to see if they were ok we had no problems.

When one of our pair died, the other pined for around a week, so I guess your bun is a bit more on it now as you posted a few weeks ago. They do get lonely when they've been used to company, so getting another would be good. We've got ours from the rabbit rescue centre, as bigdonna said, take them down there and try them for 5-10mins with one you like. If they mostly ignore each other then you're onto a good thing. If they fight or hump then forget it, the bonding will be tough or not at all. The bonding can take a while, that's another story, if you want it!