With an experienced vet, complications from spays are low. It’s a relatively standard operation – harder than a neuter, but it shouldn’t be overly complicated for an experienced vet Try not to worry too much – the important thing is to find a vet that knows what they’re doing. In the UK, we have vets that have been approved by the RWAF, which makes it easy to find a good one. I believe in the US, the HRS has a list of recommended vets. There might be something similar, depending where you live.

Some questions you could ask:

– should my rabbit be fasted before surgery? (Answer: NO! Rabbits should never be fasted and an experienced vet will know this)
– Will you send my rabbit home with painkillers? (Answer: Yes! Rabbits need painkillers after surgery to ensure they start eating again as soon as possible – some vets think rabbits don’t suffer much pain from spays because they’re good at hiding it, but a good vet will know to give you painkillers)
– How many rabbits have you spayed? (Answer: it should be a surgery they conduct regularly, multiple times a month)
– You could also ask some general questions about rabbit health – for example, what kind of diet would they recommend? How can you prevent teeth problems in your rabbit? What are warning signs of illness to look out for? These would help to show if the vet is used to dealing with rabbits.

Oh, also  you could ask what you should do with her after the surgery – these should be:

– Ensure she’s eating as soon as possible, and pooping. Force feed if she hasn’t eaten on her own after 8 hours

– Keep her warm

– Keep her confined to a smaller space to make sure she doesn’t rip out her stitches by running and jumping

– Make sure she isn’t chewing or licking the wound excessively

– Keep an eye on the wound to ensure it doesn’t get infected

You’re asking a question you already seem to know the answer to! As long as the vet knows his stuff you should be fine!

But to answer anyway, choosing to spay a female bun or not is very personal. A lot of members here choose to spay, I personally never spayed preventive because I don’t feel comfortable cutting open a healthy bun. I do neuter bucks because else there would be a lot of babies if I put them with a doe, haha. I would consider spaying in case of medical, hormonal or behavioural issues but as long as those are not there I won’t spay.

Not much else to add. However…

Posted By Daisy on 8/16/2018 3:44 PM
You’re asking a question you already seem to know the answer to! As long as the vet knows his stuff you should be fine!

But to answer anyway, choosing to spay a female bun or not is very personal. A lot of members here choose to spay, I personally never spayed preventive because I don’t feel comfortable cutting open a healthy bun. I do neuter bucks because else there would be a lot of babies if I put them with a doe, haha. I would consider spaying in case of medical, hormonal or behavioural issues but as long as those are not there I won’t spay.

I’m sorry but choosing whether or not to spay a doe is not a personal thing. It is crucial in preventing uterine cancer. An unspayed doe has a very high risk of uterine cancer so she would need to have an emergency spay anyway. Not to mention you cannot put an unspayed female with another rabbit. Females can also suffer from phantom pregnancies which would be very traumatic for her. I understand not wanting to have a healthy bun operated on but in this instance, it’s for the greater good (got to be cruel to be kind) plus a healthy bun usually recovers from something so invasive much more than a bun whose health is compromised

100% what Sarah added – 70% to 80% will develop uterine cancer by the age of 5 if they are unspayed… And at that point you have to spay them anyway OR its spread and they pass away. And as rabbits can live 10 years or longer, that is cutting their life very short.

Ps – its ok to be nervous and scared – I was with my girl, but she was done just over a month ago and other than just the first two days of pain management and making sure she was eating, she was 100% back to normal after a few days.

Yes unspayed does do have cancer risks, but the chance that they die of something unrelated is significant. The chance that I’m operating on a bun who would never have gotten cancer is too big for me. They may as well die of 1000’s of other causes (gas, EC, arthritis or other types of cancer) before dying of uterine cancer. Now if my does have big behavioural issues then that would draw me over the line to spay because being a hormonal little beotch to your cage mate is not fun for anyone. Without having a direct reason to spay, I really find it hard to justify.

Furthermore, I do not believe that unspayed females are unbondable. Here where I live it’s extremely uncommon for shelters to spay females (they do neuter males) and there are plenty of bonded buns and bonding happening in there. I’ve had 2 unspayed bonded does before. My own Muffin as I said is unspayed and happily bonded to Monster. Yes, she has had a false pregancy but that just results in her building a nest out of hay and fur (and Monster sitting right next to it munching on it :’) ) and during spring she would honk at Monster. But if these phases are rare enough I’m fine with her losing her marbles every now and then. Heck, I lose them once a month too! If she will go into frequent false pregancies or become a beotch to Monster then yes I will definetly step in but right now I don’t see the need to, behavioural wise. My 2 unspayed bonded does in the past never had false pregancies nor displayed any hormonal behaviour aside from the puberty phase. My 1 single unspayed doe I had in the past sprayed, but never had false pregancies either.

I suppose it is a matter of where you live and what is the norm here. I believe around 50% of the people here spay their does, the other 50% doesn’t. And of those 50% that does spay, I’d bet half of them spay because of behaviour and not to prevent cancer. And yes, that 50% that doesn’t spay does keep bonded couples (with a neutered male). I’m sure if we would place a poll here it would be more like 90% spayed and 10% unspayed. It’s funny how these things differ between regions/countries!

I’d been debating this question constantly since I got my bun, Anna, in March. She’s a year old and mosy likely unspayed. I also live far away from a vet and am probably going to pay CA$600 for the whole procedure+meds, and so as a student, I was hesitant.

However I have decided to spay her shortly, and this is how I view it;

if Anna were to get sick from uterine cancer, I know I would want to do whatever I could, and pay for vet bills which would probably be the same amount or more. I would have to deal with potentially losing her, watching her suffer/fight, and still have to pay/drive to a vet.

Sure theres a chance nothing happens, but its more likely to happen, and if it does you’d have to go through the same obstacles/fears + having your bun be sick.

It can be a tough decision especially when people make you feel like a bad pet parent for questioning having it done, but if I were you i would for sure spay her!