Holding Hay?

[RaxMan]

We’ve had our rabbit for almost three years now but today she was acting differently. We heard her making a lot more noise than usual so we went through to her cage and she had some of her bedding in her mouth so my mum took it out because we thought she was eating it. We left her but when we went back through not even 5 minutes later she had a lot of hay in her mouth and was putting it behind her hay box and running around with it I tried to take it out of her mouth but she didn’t look very happy and ran away. She has never done this before. What is she doing? She got a new bigger cage a couple of months ago could it be to do with that?

[tobyluv]

Is your rabbit spayed? It sounds like she is having a false pregnancy and is building a nest. Let her build the nest. She will tire of that endeavor in a few days and you can then remove it. If she isn’t spayed, it would really be beneficial to her health to have her spayed, and would eliminate the chance of uterine cancer.

[Bam]

Totally second Tobyluv. It sounds like a false pregnancy. Unspayed girl rabbits can have those. It means their bodies “believe” they’re pregnant. The urge to build a nest is very strong, you can give her a smallish cardboard box or sth like that, so she can make a nest-box out of. It will help calm her down and keep her occupied. False preganancies always resolve on their own.

False pregnancies can recur though, and if she starts going into false pregnancies a lot, it’s even more important that you get her spayed. Unspayed rabbits are at a high risk of getting uterine cancer around age 3-4, and it often starts with over-production of sex hormones. It’s not known why this is, but it is very common in bunnies (60-80% of does).

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