I think venting here is appropriate. And I’m not all that experienced but that seems high to me. We had our girl spayed and it was a long time ago so I can’t remember exactly but I want to say in the $200 to $300+ range for her spay.

We always asked our vet ahead of time for a cost estimation with any procedure which she always printed out for us in line item detail.

I’m sorry you had such a lousy experience. I think you are justified in your being miffed.

I would always want to speak with the vet myself face to face. And always ask for cost estimate up front. But you know that now.

That does seem a little pricey — Finn’s castration was £250, and Myrtle’s came to £530 (UK sterling) (however she had to stay in for about 4 days afterwards).

With that said, rabbits are expensive pets to keep as you are paying exotic pet prices, with many operations they sometimes need coming to thousands. Make sure you find a vet that is more in the standard price range and one that is also rabbit savvy.

And I am curious if you were given an itemized bill that breaks down the cost of everything. I would be interested in what was charged for what.

From my experience on this site, I believe Wick’s vet charges on the higher side for generally everything. His neuter was $268. So I do believe $800 is high, but it could be general availability and resources. Not being in a large city actually works against pricing, because that means resources are more limited. Rabbits need specific anesthesia, certain staff may need to be called in who are familiar with rabbit surgeries, specific equipment is needed, and some vets run blood tests for safety reasons prior to the operations, which may need to be shipped somewhere for review. So a lot of items come into play. Now does this add to $800, I wouldn’t think so.

While it’s not realistic to ask for a refund/some money back, it may be worth asking for a breakdown of where those expenses went. Wick’s vet provides a bill with all their services/resources listed out, and the vet checks off everything that was done and how much it costs, so I know exactly where the money went to. So $2.50 for the pain shot, $12.00 for the tube feeding, $125 for the actual neuter, $50.00 for the fluid therapy… etc.. It may be worthwhile to get this break down so you can do estimates if he needs another procedure from this vet too.

My three were all 250$ to 300$ each, so 800$+ is very over priced. To be honest, I wouldnt have given my bun to them without a full run down (written or typed+signed) about what they were going to do and how much each thing was going to cost.

800 dollars for a neuter sounds outrageous to me. I’d have felt miffed too. I hope all goes well and please do post about the expense breakdown, it would be useful to others.

You could look into pet insurance for your bun. I have pet insurance for my bun as well as for my dog. It feels a lot safer.

We paid $75 for Oscar’s neuter. That included everything, although we didn’t take any pain meds home. The surgery was done by who I consider to be the best exotics vet in the area. I realize that $75 is on the low end, and a couple of hundred is the norm depending on where you live, but honestly I can’t imagine what extra special care they could have provided to warrant a $850 price tag. That’s pretty outrageous. Definitely go through your bill and see what the big price items were. I’m curious to know what that vet charges for a spay? $1000? 

I hope Yoda has a speedy recovery!

Agreed, that’s crazy compared to my vet. But as mentioned, it can really vary from vet to vet and area. But I’ve been surprised by vet bills before, even with my usual vet. I usually have an idea in my head of how much it will be and a few times I was off by a couple hundred.

Yeah, that’s a lot of different stuff! My vet will do optional pre-anaesthetic bloodwork which is around $60.00. I always got this done when my older rabbits were put under.

Blood work comes before the neuter to ensure all organs work well before surgery. My vet included that in my 250$ to 300$ price.

Technically… You didn’t get a 10% discount $800 X 90% = $720. The charge to use the anesthesia monitor (?) may be a result of needing to borrow equipment or it’s specialized for the few operations they do? Idk what the two bottom stat charges are though.

Happy to hear Yoda is recovering!

CBC is a complete blood count. I found this: http://www.vetstreet.com/care/cbc-and-chemistry-profile. Blood panels are very valuable when you want to determine the bun’s health and how likely it is to cope with anaesthetics. It would’ve cost the same or even more where I am, Bam had one done when he had an airway infection last summer. It told quite a lot about his health.

They certainly seem to have charged a lot for the pain meds. I’d try to find a more reasonably priced vet. And look into pet insurance for the future, hopefully you’ll never need to use it of course.