Hello My name's Nadine Stapleton and I'm an exotic veterinarian from the Royal Veterinary College in London. Thank you for joining me to learn about companionship in rabbits today. Today we'll cover why companionship in rabbits is so important, who are the best bunnies to bond together to try and ensure a harmonious bond, how to undertake bonding and read rabbit body language to interpret their behaviour during a bonding session.
How can you resolve problems with an already established bond and how you would keep bonded rabbits together? One of the 5 freedoms of animal welfare includes the freedom to express normal behaviour. Inherent in that is the necessity to house rabbits with company of their own kind as appropriate for species, and this allows for species-specific behaviours and naturalistic behaviours in captivity.
Companionship is extremely important for a rabbit's wellbeing. In one study, rabbit's desire to spend time with companions ranked as highly as their desire for food, and anyone who's spent any time with rabbits knows how much of a priority food is in their life. Appropriate companions are also an important form of enrichment.
In another study, rabbits with companions express more naturalistic behaviours such as binkying, playing, and grooming. And in both domestic and wild populations, undertaking predator surveillance is much easier if you have lots of companions to share the burden. So we know that a rabbit's need for social contact is well recognised and that includes both the commercial and the laboratory settings as well.
Guidelines produced in Australia in 2004 and in Europe in 2010 actually recommend a group housing for rabbits wherever possible, but sadly the situation of the pet population does not reflect this same trend. So what is the trend in pet rabbits? Well, every year the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals conducts a survey of the UK pet owners, and this survey is representative of the UK by pet owning population in regards to age, region, ethnicity and pet species.
It focuses on five topic areas companionship, environment, diet, behaviour, and health of dog, cats, and rabbits, and it's been undertaken yearly since 2011. Sadly, in 2024, the poor report showed that a staggering 50% of rabbits in the UK do not have appropriate companions. Now, despite that distressing statistic, the same survey actually indicated that 94% of owners felt that they were well informed about their rabbits social needs.
So where is the mismatch here? Is it apathy, they know better, but they're not doing anything about it. Is it the Dunning-Kruger effect, they know so little that they don't even know what they don't know.
Have they tried and failed to bond rabbits together before and they've just given up? Are they getting no advice, the wrong advice from vets or friends or other sources? I guess ultimately the causes for this depressing situation are likely multifactorial, but the one consistent thing that we actually have control over are our own recommendations and the advice that we give.
So are we as vets and paraprofessionals discussing companionship needs with clients when they come in for routine appointments? Well, the following advice is designed to make you feel more confident about how to discuss the topic of bonding to improve rabbit welfare. So what makes bonding so difficult?
Well, most of the time it's not sometimes you introduce two rabbits together in completely the wrong way, and they just get on. But equally, rabbits are a wonderful combination of needy yet territorial, and living underground in the dark a lot of the time and being prey species who don't really want to draw attention to themselves means that their body language is pretty subtle, and to many people that makes their behaviour hard to predict and consequently bonding can be perceived as challenging. Owners are often given bad or downright dangerous advice, like the owner of this rabbit who was told that the two boys that she had purchased would be fine together, and that neutering them wasn't necessary.
So as soon as they hit puberty, they started to fight and consequently this rabbit was badly injured. Other owners believe that a pet of another species is sufficient for companionship, but that can be problematic for so many reasons. There's a risk of trauma.
Different species have different social priorities and needs, which they may not be expected to mutually meet. There is the potential for disease risk as well. So for example, rabbits can carry borderella in their airways and it can be completely non-pathogenic to them.
But it can cause life threatening infections in guinea pigs, for example, so, having companionship of the same species is essential. So what constitutes good advice? Well, the best advice you can give a client with a lone rabbit is to firstly make sure they know that companionship is really important, and also that if they rescue a rabbit from a reputable charity, many of those places will actually do the bonding for you, and that can really take the stress out of it.
This also comes with additional benefits of knowing that you're giving a rescue rabbit a home, and those rabbits are usually fully vaccinated and neutered, and they're often screened for health issues such as E. Caniculi or dental disease. Your rabbit also gets to choose their own companion, and you get the surprise of finding out what the new companion looks like when you go to pick them up, so that can be some really, really, you know, stress-free, easy advice with lots of benefits that we can give our clients.
However, for those clients who wish to undertake bonding themselves, let's have a little bit of a look at how to go about it safely. So there are 3 main things to consider when you're bonding rabbits. The first is the environment, the second is the companion itself, and the other is the type of supervision and how qualified the person is to read cues, and intervene when necessary.
OK, so if we focus first on the environment, neutral territory is really important, and I can't stress that enough. It's also worth stressing that by neutral territory, I mean that neither rabbit has ever been there before. Not, you know, my rabbit only goes in there on Wednesdays, or it's his room but I've vacuumed it, it has to be neutral territory.
You also don't want really small spaces, however, if the space is really large, for example, something like a large backyard, what can happen then is you can have the two rabbits that just set up two separate territories within that space. So you want an environment that encourages some interaction, but not a space so small that it creates conflict. So basically our goal is to reduce conflict, and we do this by reducing competition for resources, so that's space.
We also reduce the competition for things like food, water, toys, environmental furniture such as hides. So, for those of you that are parents, think of them as kids. You wouldn't just give a snack or a toy to one child, you know, that's going to create conflict, and they're going to fight over it.
So Snacks, multiple distractions. So in the case of rabbits, that might take the form of scatter feeding, which is preferred instead of placing food in a bowl, because bowls can be guarded, but when you scatter food everywhere, that prevents the rabbits from being able to do resource guarding. And your aim is basically to get the rabbits engaging in as many normal activities as you can in a mutual space.
So for rabbits, that's eating, playing, grooming and exploring. So this photo here shows an ideal bonding environment, which coincidentally also happens to be my husband's shed, sorry babe, it's large, it's neutral territory. I can place like a variety of tunnels and boxes and platforms, grass pots, which can all serve as hides and distractions.
I can section it off. So if one of the rabbits is getting a little spicy, then I can separate it off so that they don't have, direct contact. It's a largish space, space, but it's not so big that they are going to be able to avoid one another.
OK, so let's consider the, the companion now. Speaking in generalities, the most harmonious bonds are generally going to be a male female neutered pair. There are definitely successful male-male bonds or female female paired bunnies, but, in the wild, the females are all competing for the same things and the males are all competing for the same things, so there will generally be less conflict for a male-female pair.
If you bond two related males by keeping the brothers together since birth or sisters together since birth, it can work. Fighting between rabbits doesn't really occur before 12 weeks of age, but often when they hit puberty, they will fight. So make sure you get them neutered before they hit puberty if possible.
Trios are also possible, but they often end up with intermittent aggression, and there is definitely additional stress, which can lead to immunosuppression and then that can lead to flare-ups of things like fermite or chiliella, Echiiculi, particularly in the the sort of lowest one on the hierarchy. And in stressed rabbits on one occasion I also had 3 bunnies that all came down with hepatic oxidiosis because they all got so stressed, and immunosuppressed. So trios are difficult, they're more likely to work if you have enough space for them to live in, but if you don't, then the lack of that resource is going to be a source of constant tension and potential aggression.
And of course they're all individuals like us, so they have their own personalities and temperaments, and, and this comes into play too. So in regards to supervision, certainly initial bonding sessions should always be supervised, preferably by someone who understands rabbit body language, but that could just include someone who's done a little bit of reading. It doesn't take much to learn.
The timing of the sessions to begin with should be fairly short, round about 10 to 20 minutes is usually fine, but to be honest, there are no hard and fast rules. If they're getting on great, you can keep them in for longer. Put fences up between them if you're not very experienced or if you want just that added reassurance, or certainly if you've got a known aggressor, but otherwise no barriers is fine unless you actually witness aggressive, aggressive behaviour, and then in that case I think barriers being put up is essential to prevent any, risk of harm to the other rabbit.
So when you're supervising the bonding sessions or if you're giving advice to clients who will be doing this, feel free to print off this, This table here because one of the things that we find is sometimes the thing that is restricting the rabbits from actually being bonded properly. Is too much intervention. I think sometimes people are so overly anxious about what constitutes bad behaviour.
So I've had clients that have just really prolonged the bonding sessions, and it's gone on for weeks and weeks and weeks because they had a huge level of anxiety around one rabbit humping another, which is a perfectly normal behaviour, or chasing one another around. Or just constantly pulling the rabbits apart and separating them at the merest hint of, you know, humping or circling or what have you. So if we look at the first category here of positive behaviour, ignoring one another is actually great, so, a lot of owners don't appreciate that, but if they're just sharing the same space and not unduly paying attention to one another, that's actually a really good sign.
If the rabbits are grooming themselves, that means that they're relaxed enough to take their eye off the other rabbit, so that's also a good sign. And certainly if they're mutually grooming, that's an excellent sign. That's what we're looking for, and that's usually a really powerful indicator that things are going well and that potentially those rabbits could just be left together from that point.
Equally lying down next to one another or seeking one another's companionship, including, even if that's through a fence, is usually a sign that you can put the rabbits in together in the same shared space. Humping is a dominance behaviour and that is completely expected during bonding, and I think a lot of owners, may think that that's more sexualized or a sexual behaviour and they get really nervous about that. It's a really important part of their dominance behaviour and the process of actually working out who's who in the hierarchy.
And then of course eating is a sign of increased relaxation in one another's presence. So hence I do really encourage having some really nice scatter feeding of food in the environment. If you see one rabbit approach the other in a crouched position, sitting immobile with their ears back and almost shoving their head under the other rabbit's chin, that's also a really positive sign of submission and sometimes I'll refer to that as a like a grooming request.
The rabbit is basically asking for affection, so the dominant rabbit would then normally sort of pay them some attention and that's a really positive sign that things are going well as well. Knowing sort of the grey area and when you might need to intervene can be a bit challenging. I think a lot of people get really anxious when the fur starts flying, but a little skirmish is OK.
Missing fur and really superficial scratches, really superficial nips is fine. It is part of establishing a hierarchy. If you're feeling a little bit nervous, then you can just pull them apart, but leave them in the same space, don't separate them completely.
Try wherever possible to continue the bond, even if there's a little bit of fur flying. We want to try and end the bonding session on a positive rather than a negative. Chasing is fine.
The one time I might intervene is if there's extremely excessive chasing and you can see that one rabbit is getting really stressed. So breaking up the environment with hides or things like platforms they can jump on top of, not allowing the hides to have just one entrance and one exit, we want them to have a through and through like a tunnel, so that the rabbit doesn't go into a dead end and feel trapped, because then that's just going to make them defensive and overly anxious, and it's going to increase tension and stress. Lunging is OK, sometimes really nervous rabbits will just do a defensive lunge or a grunt, females in particular will do that.
It's OK so long as they're not, you know, biting or latching on or being overly aggressive, and hiding is also a really acceptable behaviour for the normal sort of, really shy rabbits who just might need to, you know, take things a little bit slower. So when you're introducing, you know, the first rabbit into that space, you can just pop it anywhere, but when you're popping the second rabbit into the bonding area, don't put it directly in front of the other rabbit, actually place it a little bit further away, maybe with a visual barrier between them, so that they're not just being placed face to face, because that's going to create a situation where they feel like they might need to defend themselves. Rapid movements are acceptable, but we should try and encourage them to slow down, so for example, circling behaviours are really common, but I would intervene if they're doing like a tornado.
And when I say intervene, again, I don't mean completely separating them from one another. What I do mean is just maybe wearing some, you know, garden gloves or something like that, gently pull them apart, but leave them in the same space, and if they go back to mild circling, that's absolutely fine, but if they're doing really, really rapid circling, then just gently pull them apart and, you know, giving them distractions and things so that they're not, you know, focusing on one another so much. Negative behaviour, I mean immediate rapid aggressive behaviour does not mean that the bond is not going to work, but does mean that you probably need to have a fence or a barrier of some sort between the two bunnies to prevent them from getting too frightened or from injured.
Certainly if they're inflicting serious wounds, a little nick or a scratch is fine, it's OK, but, you know, bleeding or biting and holding on certainly would be of concern, and we definitely would encourage you to separate them off and maybe do the bonding through a fence for a couple of days before they're put back in the same space. Again, excessive chasing, we've already mentioned, ears forward, tail up is usually a sign that that rabbit is going to become aggressive and that they're being very territorial and defensive, so look out for that sort of behaviour. Ears forward is also curiosity, so if ears are forward, but the body is angled to the side, that is OK, it's just really if they're sort of, You know, like a bulldog stance, leaning forward, ears forward, tail up, and certainly any rabbit that is so fearful that they're vocalising, I would be quite concerned about the level of anxiety.
So, using medications might be useful in a case like that, like a 25 mg per kg of, gabapentin. Just to reduce their anxiety or even starting at a lower dose, a 10 mg per kg dose of gabapentin just to reduce anxiety, in one where you've got like a really fearful rabbit, particularly in those rabbits where people have tried to bond to them in the past and they've had some really, really negative experiences. So put simply, when supervising, as a general rule, we want them to behave normally together without focusing on one another too much.
So we're looking for positive behaviours like ignoring one another, eating together, grooming requests, one rabbit shoving its head under the other one's chin. If they're actually grooming one another, lying down next to one another, and slow humping and circling is absolutely fine, but we might want to consider putting a fence between them if there's any evidence of biting or attempted biting, lunging, boxing. If one rabbit is just really overexcited and hyperfocused on the other one and really pestering them to the point where they're just getting annoyed, maybe just a barrier between them like a fence would be fine.
And again, really rapid circling is sometimes an indicator that they're manoeuvring to try and get in position to bite, so again I'd pop a fence between them as well. So let's look at an example. If you look at these two little loved up buns, you wouldn't know it to look at them, but these two were actually a really, really challenging bond.
The longest it's ever taken me to bond, two bunnies together, which was about 12 days. To give you some backstory, Snuggle, the one on the left, he was a hand rear, and like most hand rears, he was a little bit of a weirdo. He didn't really know how to wrap it properly.
But he was super smart, he could do a heap of tricks, and he was basically exactly the kind of rabbit that is usually deprived of a companion because he was, perceived to be really happy, really, engaged with his owners, and they felt that he didn't really need a rabbit companion, but I managed to convince them otherwise. So we rescued Quinn, she was about 9 weeks of age when we chose her, and I chose her deliberately, a very young female rabbit, basically because she wouldn't provoke him or challenge him. She was too young to be territorial, and yes, as a feminist, I hear myself saying this out loud and I'm dying a little inside, but still the reasoning is sound.
So we introduced them in hubby's shed. I definitely recommend when you're doing your bonding sessions to have some personal protective equipment around such as, garden gloves, a towel, a broom, because if you have to pull them apart, they're very, very quick and you may get bitten. But remember this is my beloved hand rear, I'd known him since he was a baby, so instead, I had my camera to document their love story.
And, basically to get photos for just such an occasion as this. So of course we popped them into the big enclosure and he immediately flew across the space and tried to kill her. Now, to my credit, I dropped my phone and I saved the baby bunny, so you'll notice that this is not a picture of them.
It is a photo of a very aggressive bunny with similar body language, so you can see that this bunny here has her ears up, her feet facing forward, she's leaning forward, she's got the, the red glowing eyes. You can't see her tail, but trust me, her tail will be in a vertical position as well, so this is what aggressive posture looks like in a bunny. So, his behaviour necessitated a plan B, and instead of one big space, we had to divide it.
Unfortunately still, even with the divider in between, he spent most of his time trying to kill her through the bars. So poor little baby Quinn, the female would approach the bars because she was still quite curious, and Snuggle would lunge and he would bite the bars and he'd use his front feet to try and box her through the bars, . So you can see here his body language is very forward facing.
He's leaning forward, he's got quite a defensive posture. His ears are forward, his tail is erect. She has her body turned slightly to the side.
She's curious, so her ears are forward. At this stage, he had tried to attack her multiple times, so she was a little bit defensive, and you can see she's kind of getting ready to run away at the merest hint that something bad is going to happen. But her body positioned on the side makes her more curious than aggressive.
So basically we had them, . In this position, we wanted them to try and engage in normal activities and we wanted him to stop focusing on her and stop attacking her through the bars. So the one sort of thing that is often guaranteed to distract rabbits is food.
They're really, really food motivated. So we used high value foods like pellets and herbs, and ideally what we wanted them to do is just engage in normal activities, ignoring one another. So we placed food in his enclosure about 1 ft away from the fence, and the same thing with her on her side, food about 1 ft away from the fence, so they could see one another eating, and we did this for a few days until the aggressive body language stopped.
So the next step in the process was to alternate spaces until each of them was exhibiting relaxed body posture. So, you can see here from these two photos, they've swapped spots, and in each of these photos they're actually choosing to lie next to one another, with the wire in between them, and we waited until they were doing that for a few days in a row before we put them in a space together. And to be honest, that was me being overly cautious.
His behaviour because he's a hand rear was very, very different to most rabbits, and so we were, we were just taking a very, very cautious approach here, but in truth I probably could have put them in a bigger space together a little bit earlier than I did. So for their second meet cute, we actually snuck her into the larger enclosure, and we popped her behind a hide rather than dropping her right in front of him to try and reduce conflict. We then did short meetings a couple of times a day, they ranged from, Sort of 10 to 30 minutes, and while we were doing that, we gave them things to try and draw their focus away from one another, so we were looking for positive body language.
Here she has her head down and she was actually shoving her head under his chin, which is a grooming request. There was a little bit of circling and humping, and then they ate calmly side by side, ignoring one another. So at that point we knew that they would be fine to go in together.
So as soon as we saw those positive interactions and the behaviours that we wanted to see, it's really important that we kept them together. If they're displaying all of the right body language, try not to separate them from that point because it just gets confusing for them. So we kept them together and we kept them in that neutral territory for a few more days.
We knew that they were going back into his house, so there was a small possibility that his territorial behaviour may kick in again. So it's really important to prepare that space. So we advised the owner to thoroughly clean his environment while he was still with us, and we also wanted to put some of her poo and a blanket that she'd been sleeping on into his environment in his house before they got there.
In that way we already have her scent in that space. I also recommend, placing some novel items in there, so things that he has never seen before in his usual territory. And what that is, is it it's just giving them things that the, that are novel to him as well, that they can then explore together as a pair to check for threats.
Now there's no evidence behind that, this is just an idea I've come up with, but the idea is that having those novel items may stimulate a sort of a paired threat surveillance response. So in other words, you've got two prey species with a novel thing in the environment, they're more likely to survive a really dangerous threat if they cooperate rather than fight. And it introduces a little bit of novelty into his environment, so it's sort of refreshing his environment a little bit as well.
OK, so now that we've covered the do's, let's look at some bonding don'ts. As a general rule, the following are not great recommendations. Bath bonding is a really, really common recommendation and I honestly don't know why this is recommended, but presumably it's designed so that they can't avoid one another, and in the bath they would find it difficult to fight because they keep slipping.
I hope you guys understand that this is a really, really bad idea. I've actually had to euthanize two rabbits, one that had a broken leg, and another one that got a fractured spine when people tried to bond like this. So please never recommend it, and I would actually say it's such a common piece of advice that's given on the internet.
I actively tell owners not to do it because they'll probably encounter it if they do Google rabbit bonding. So, yeah, proactively just tell them to avoid that. Likewise, bonding in tiny spaces in general is just a bad idea.
Anyone that's ever had a share house with someone that they hated, they can probably relate to this. Imagine being locked in a cupboard with a stranger, it's only going to create conflict. Equally unsupervised bonding that can lead to trauma and choosing the wrong companion.
So you know, trying to bond a rabbit that's sick or injured or two adult males, you know, those sorts of things are just really bad ideas. As I said before, confusing them by stopping them constantly, circling or humping, which is an important part of the bonding process. As I said, it's fine to pull them apart if their circling becomes very, very rapid.
But don't just pull them apart all the time and don't separate them completely. Pull them separate in the same space, so leave them in the same area, but just pull them physically apart and don't forget to wear your gloves, but try not to, you know, completely separate them. They, they really do have to work it out, and constantly interfering is only going to make things confusing and it's just gonna take longer.
And I may have mentioned this before, but do try and end each session on a positive note if possible. So, don't separate them completely after a small scuffle, if there's a little fur flying, that's OK, but if they're biting and holding onto skin, you know, that's definitely not OK. But try and strike that balance between letting them get on with it as much as possible, but avoiding injury.
As I said, too much interference can lead to frustration, and it will stop the establishment of a hierarchy. So it, you know, try and keep them together until you see them settle down a little bit, until you see them sort of, you know, ignoring one another for a short period of time. Then if you're still feeling a little bit nervous about them, you can take them away and, you know, do it again the next day.
But try not to end on a fight if possible, even if that means, you know, popping them on either side of a gate or a fence, just because it's, it's nicer for them to have a positive interaction is the last thing that happens. OK, so what happens next? How do we actually maintain a bond in a pair of rabbits, to avoid them from fighting throughout life.
It's not always easy to maintain a bond, particularly if you've got two males or if you've got two females, so do your best to keep the bunnies together wherever possible. So this is a photograph of a setup that we do quite commonly in our hospital. We always keep the companion rabbits in.
But we obviously have to sometimes monitor appetite or faecal output or, you know, whatever, so, we can just pop a fence divider, between them, do some monitoring, but as soon as we're able to put them back in together, we do. If you don't have this kind of space in your clinic, that's fine, if you can't do that, then at your hospital, just keeping them in separate cages with little play dates throughout the day can be an alternative. But you'll notice even though we've got the fence divider here between these two, they still choose to try and have really, really close contact with one another.
And in fact there are lots of studies that show, you know, up to 90% of the time, rabbits will actually try and sit touching one another when they're bonded. So you know, to have them separate can be quite distressing. And so do your best to try and keep them in hospital together where you can.
I know a lot of people really worry about their companion, you know, stopping eating or getting gastrointestinal stasis. We weigh the companion every day just to make sure they're eating, and I can't honestly think of any case where we've actually had to send the companion home, but we do monitor them just in case, and, Yeah, I mean they do really, really well, we've got a dedicated rabbit ward, so they're not anywhere near any predators as well, you know, everyone should have, and so they they're usually pretty relaxed and we even see them lie out doing their dead bunny flops and binkies and all sorts of stuff in that environment, so, they don't get stressed if your environment is set up as it should be for a rabbit in hospital anyway. So what do we do if good bonds go bad?
Well, sometimes bonds do break down and rabbits will fight, so I guess you've got to try and work out what the underlying cause of the conflict is. In young rabbits, it's almost inevitable at puberty, so get the boys castrated at 4 to 5 months and the girls spayed at about 5 months of age. If the rabbits are neutered and the owners are seeking advice because they're fighting, there are different ways to troubleshoot that, it just depends on the underlying cause, but the main thing is to try and keep them together.
A small fight is sometimes followed by the owner panicking, and then they just completely separate the two bunnies and pop them in separate rooms. So where possible, keep them together and monitor them, don't completely separate them. But if the owner feels that they're injuring one another and separation is essential, then just try and do a fence divider between them rather than completely separate rooms if possible.
You can imagine if you had a fight with your significant other and someone came along and went, right, that's it. You're never going to see one another again. Most of the time that's going to be an overreaction.
But if they're having more frequent issues, then I think the first step should be to check for illness, so I would recommend a full physical examination of both rabbits, and where possible to conduct some blood tests as well. Unfortunately, being prey species means that they're very, very good at hiding illness, so, it can be difficult to know whether they're well without the luxury of doing blood tests, so I definitely recommend it if you can. So basically you're trying to work out what the underlying cause is.
If they've been recently separated because one of them was unwell and only one of them went to the hospital and then they're trying to bring that rabbit back into the territory, then that might be the underlying cause and we can troubleshoot that. If you've got trios, or if you've got two boys or two girls, even if they're all neutered, sometimes they get a little bit frisky in the spring and summer with increased daylight length, so, that can be just a normal part of rabbit ownership is understanding that there's going to be times of year where there may be a little scuffle, and that's OK. One of the things I would definitely recommend to any client whose rabbits are having scuffles is just to do whatever you can to reduce boredom.
Boredom can be a really major issue here, so give them lots of stuff to do. Puzzle feeders are great, and there's a huge variety of rabbits specific puzzle feeders on the market now. But you can make your own just stuffing food and bits and bobs into, toilet roll inserts or paper towel inserts, and, you know, providing dig boxes, other environmental enrichment.
You also want to reduce resource guarding, so again, you can revert back to scatter feeding if you need to. Also, the anticipation of feeding is sometimes a trigger for aggression, so making the times that they're fed their really high value foods unpredictable, so just don't give their palates or their veg at the same time each day, because often the anticipation of feeding will trigger the aggression. So randomise the time of feeding, .
Studies have also shown that feeding less pellets and greens and making them eat more hay also can reduce aggression within groups of rabbits because basically hay just takes a longer time to eat, and if there's less time if there's more time for eating, then there's less time for fighting. You could also try rabbit pheromones, so BFR has put together a product which is a rabbit Comfort, and so you can plug in one of their diffusers or use their spray, . And also I guess just try natural things, so feeding very small amounts of dried lavender or chamomile, they can have a calming effect on them as well.
So one of the hardest decisions that rabbit owners have to make is what do they do if they've got an elderly rabbit whose companion has passed away, do they bond that elderly rabbit with another one or do they just let it live out its life as a solo rabbit, and the truth is it's, it's one of those things that you just have to talk to them about the pros and cons, and every case is going to be individual, it just depends on, You know, how much time the owners can spend with the rabbit, the health status of the rabbit, the age of the rabbit, you know, there's lots of different variables. It's pretty rare for me not to recommend bondy alone rabbit, but there are definitely some circumstances where careful consideration needs to be given, and I think if you've got a really elderly geriatric unwell rabbit, it may not be advisable to, you know, bond that rabbit with another one. It also may not be advisable to bond in confirmed cases of hepatic oxidiosis because that can be extremely hard to eradicate and also to stop them shedding, often they'll they'll have lifelong infections.
Equally, if you've got a debilitated rabbit, so something like a rabbit with spinal injuries or severe arthritis, and you're really struggling to manage its pain, then, you probably at least want a geriatric companion rather than a young rambunctious partner. But I've also seen several cases of elderly rabbits that have had really severe debilitating flare-ups of Echiiculi, and then, you know, other milder things like rabbit fur mite due to the stress and immunosuppression from bonding. So at the very, very least, if the owners are determined to get them a companion, maybe recommend giving panicure to both of them, or ivermectin prophylaxis during the bonding period may be advisable.
So hopefully you can appreciate that recommending companionship for every rabbit that comes into the clinic and ensuring that owners have the information they need to succeed in the bonding process has the potential to improve the lives of literally hundreds of thousands of rabbits. So thank you for joining me today, I really appreciate it.