House Rabbit Community and Store
What are we about? Please read about our Forum Culture and check out the Rules.
The subject of intentional breeding or meat rabbits is prohibited. The answers provided on this board are for general guideline purposes only. The information is not intended to diagnose or treat your pet. It is your responsibility to assess the information being given and seek professional advice/second opinion from your veterinarian and/or qualified behaviorist.
- This topic has 8sd replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 14 years, 8 months ago by
.
-
-
Do rabbits have to be spayed or nuetered to try bonding? One of my friends has an older female rabbit and a young rabbit she is getting next week, and I was wondering (for her) if they have to be spayed? I want her to spay them anyways, as I want to spay mine, but we both show (I do, she is going to) so I don’t think we can. Can they be put together?
-
My understanding is that in order to show animals in state or official ‘breed’ shows, they need to be in tact. Some smaller shows (such as with 4H) may allow it. Although 4H also teaches you how to raise rabbits for food so maybe they judge on the criteria as to how many people it could feed…
As such, you cannot allow show rabbits to inhabit the same cage or even cages that share a wire wall. Matings HAVE happened through the wire – albeit rare. In addition, as a show rabbit, you don’t want them to fight for any reason and matings as well can cause issues that will make a show rabbit no longer showable (such as having one bite piece of an ear off) – besides the fact that you can get 10 babies every month from matings.
In other words, no bonding for show animals, especially rabbits. They must be alone in seperate areas where they cannot reach one another – both to be safe from injury as well as from pregnacy. Sometimes you may see show dogs or cats playing together but that is due to the fact that they are not always in heat as well as you have usually a few seconds to get them apart if they do couple. With a rabbit, they’re always in heat and it can take less than 5 seconds for a mating to happen.
-
I was thinking of doing that because my rabbit is (obviously) more important than showing. Do males also have that really high risk of cancer? Because one of my rabbits is male, the other female. (obviously not in the same cage) I will let my friend know this, to try to get hers altered, I suggested it anyways, because I am fixing mine in a while.
We just show at our county fair in showmanship so it is a pretty small show. I will call the fairgrounds and ask because it makes me worried about the cancer thing- I never knew about that before! (well, I did, but didn’t know it was so common) 
MarkBun- Just assuring you, I don’t show that type of rabbits (it actually really bothers me when people do) but I just show showmanship, which is where you tell all the parts of a rabbit, show the judge how healthy the rabbit is, answer questions about breeds of rabbits, etc.
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.