Bonding a snuffles rabbit to healthy bunnies

Question
Hi Dana,

We are a small animal rescue located in Ontario.  I have a question regarding the "adoptability" of one of our bunnies.

We have taken in a family of 5 rabbits (all spayed/neutered).  Although we were really hoping to adopt them together, they've been with us for a quite awhile and it looks like we may have to split them into a pair and a trio.  

One of the bunnies came to us with a respiratory infection. The culture and sensitivity test diagnosed it as enterobacteria sensitive to Baytril.  He has been treated and despite a slightly damp nose, he has been healthy and symptom free for many months.  The rest of his bunny family never exhibited any signs of respiratory illness.

We were contacted today by a lady that has 4 girl bunnies.  She would love to adopt two of our boy bunnies (one being the previously sick one) to her crew.  It seems that a couple of her bunnies were purchased from questionable breeders, to say the least (as babies they've had head tilt, splay legs and she did notice a very sickly, sneezy bunny when she went to get her rabbits :(

In your opinion, would it be too risky to try to bond our little guy to her girls and risk exposing them to his possibly recurring sniffles?  If the bonding process does not work out, she would be returning him and his buddy to us.  Given that her girls may have been exposed from where they came from, could they possibly already be carriers as the rest of our five seem to be?

This lady seems like a wonderful potential adopter but we would certainly not want to risk making her little family sick.  

Thanks so much,

Kareen

Answer
Dear Kareen,

If these were my female bunnies, I would go full steam ahead with the blind dates.  :)  In my experience, chronic upper respiratory infection is not so much a matter of an unusual pathogen (Enterobacteri is a common inhabitant of the rabbit GI tract, so the girls can't "catch" something they already have) as of an unfortunate accident of morphology.  

Many rabbits with chronic URI have physically blocked sinuses.  This can be due to tooth root intrusion, chronic infection causing inflammation and scarring, and other reasons.  The reason they get sniffles is because their particular schnozzes are hospitable to them, not because they harbor particularly nasty bacteria.  In short, the condition is almost never contagious.

So I say...go for it!

Dana