Advice on behaviour - should we spay?

[molliebunster]

Hi - have just joined in order to post a question - but have already got quite a bit of good info from reading posts here.

We have a 9 month old female giant bunny who was well handled as a youngster and has been totally delightful. She would lick and snuggle up to you. We had a week away over Easter and she was in boarding (her second time there) and it is like a different rabbit has come home. She is cage territorial, agressive, growling and lunging. You can pet her in the cage but when you take go to open the door she is straight out and going for you! She is also digging a lot (or trying to.) When she is out she makes straight for the same corner and tries to dig up the carpet. (She is a house bun.)

I am unsure if it is related to being unsettled from the boarding (she has been home 10 days now) or whether it is hormonal and she needs spaying.

I found a good vet who does the spaying for the local animal rescue and they said that it might help, it might not. At £100+ for the procedure I'd kind of like to understand some pointers as to whether this could be hormonally driven behaviour that spaying would help (in which case the fact she was away is coincidental) or whether it might make no difference and we need another approach - if so what?!

Thanks so much to any more experienced bunny owners who can reply.

 

[PaGal]

Spaying should help those behaviors although it is not guaranteed. Some feel that the longer the bad behavior goes on the more it becomes habit so spaying sooner rather than later is your best bet. Spaying will also prevent your bun from experiencing several cancers of the reproductive tract. I would go for the spaying. It could be coincidence but I think more than likely it is hormonal.

 

[kmaben]

It sounds territorial but whether it was brought on by hormones or the boarding is hard to tell. She's use to your home and you. To be boarded with strangers is a little stressful and she probably did not get run time. The boarding may have triggered the territorial feelings but a spay may correct them.

 

[Spikethebunny]

That is about the age Spike was when he started getting hormonal. We got him neutered and that helped all of those behavoirs a lot. I would think spaying will settle your gal down a lot as well. And as someone has already mentioned, spaying is really important for overall bun health anyway, so I would just go for it.

 

[molliebunster]

Thanks very much. She has started pulling her fur out and trying to nest tonight - so I guess that pretty much confirms the hormonal theory! My Dad also pointed out that she would have sensed / smelled other rabbits (males) whilst at boarding so that might have triggered something too. I will ring the vet in the morning.

 

[Imbrium]

it's most likely a combination of the boarding and hormones... that said, even if spaying doesn't fix the unwanted behaviors, it's still definitely the best thing you can do for your rabbit!
~ it eliminates false pregnancies, which can be pretty stressful for the rabbit
~ it typically improves litter box habits a fair amount (don't expect all the poop in the box, but my girls went from peeing outside the box multiple times a week to once every month or two and only if there's a pile of hay sitting around on the floor)
~ it makes their pee smell a little less horrendous
~ the fact that the seemingly hormonal behavior has *just* started works in your favor - by spaying her sooner rather than later, there's far less chance of unwanted behaviors becoming "learned" and therefore continuing long after the spay (I say "long after" because it can take up to a month for a female's hormones to be completely gone).

and, without question, the #1 reason to spay is that the average lifespan of unspayed females is HALF that of spayed females! an unspayed female has, I believe, an 80% or so chance of developing some sort of cancer of the reproductive system (ovarian, uterine and/or mammarian) by the time they're 3-5 years old. unless caught early (before it can spread at all) and treated aggressively (in the case of ovarian/uterine cancers, the main treatment is a spay surgery since those organs are removed during a spay), these cancers can easily be deadly.