Bonding a male that can’t be neutered

[Immie]

Hello everyone. I’m a long time reader but first time poster on this forum.

We got our lovely mini rex boy Benjamin this year and he’s now 7 months old. We wanted to be sure he’d have a happy life with another rabbit for company, so planned to buy a female and have BOTH rabbits fixed.

We found a wonderful breeder for the female, who has been sending photos of the kit’s progress and getting us excited for her ready date at the end of January.

Today I took Benjamin to be neutered at my trusted vets, and sadly we almost lost him due to the anaesthetic. Ben is outwardly a very healthy rabbit but something is amiss. The xray is unclear, but to cut a long story short – he struggled to breathe when turned over and it would be risky to attempt anaesthetic again. This has been a scary and horrible day for all of us! More investigations are pending about his health. (His chest sounds clear and hes otherwise seemingly fine!)

I’ve done a lot of reading about bonding rabbits, and the general consensus seems to be that an unneutered male would pester a spayed female and they’ll potentially fight. I want to know if anyone has any success stories with this! Are there any combinations where this has been known to work? Ben doesn’t currently show any mating behaviours such as marking or humping or circling.

I really had high hopes we could get our boy a companion and they’d be happy together! Today’s news has really put me off trying to neuter him and I certainly won’t risk his life again by trying.

Thank you for reading.

[Gina.Jenny]

Podge and Gina are an exception to the rule. Podge isn’t neutered on medical grounds on the advice of the rescue’s vet and our vet, Gina was spayed months before introducing her to Podge. Podge and Gina were both caught as strays and adopted by us. Gina was almost totally feral when we gave her a home here, but once she bonded with Podge, she changed into a much calmer bunny. Podge and Gina are totally devoted to each other, and spend hours a day curled up together. it is possible therefore to bond an unaltered boy to an altered girl, but it will still come down to the two buns getting on, not every boy/girl pair works

This thread has lots of pics showing the great bond these two have

https://binkybunny.com/FORUM/tabid/54/aft/145356/Default.aspx

[Immie]

Hi GinaJenny. Thank you so much for sharing this. It’s good to know that it ‘can’ work sometimes. There’s still hope! We’ve decided we’ll give it a try very carefully and keep them separate if it’s not working out.
Your bunnies are beautiful, I love the photos

[Author]

Messages