Need help with my female bunny.

[Milkamuesli]

Hi everyone! I’m new to this forum! (And not an English native.)
I’m living with 3 bunnies. One lionhead, one mini-lop and a mixed one, their baby.
They were house bunnies before but we moved them outside, were they have much more space to play.

Anyway, the problem is Milka, the mini-lop. She is quite dominant, sometimes aggressive towards the boys.
(They are both neutered.) So Milka keeps running after them and humping them whenever she has an opportunity to. Cookie is fine with it, he just continues what he is doing, since he is the ‘last one’ in their hierachry, I guess. But Muesli will always fight back. It’s getting quite intense sometimes.
She now also started to mark everything with urine, like I found the males doing that before getting neutered.
I read a lot online now, could it be that she is frustrated about not being able to have babies anymore? She sometimes also makes nests, stuffs them with hair and does not let anyone near it. When she gets bored of the nest, Cookie uses it to sleep inside. He is almost 6month old.

So my question is, can I do anything to help her cool down a little? I don’t want to spay her, tbh. It looks quite painful..

[jerseygirl]

Welcome Milkamusesli

A spay is more invasive the castration, but with an experienced vet doing it and proper pain relief while they recover, they do well. : )

The main reason I had my females spayed is the health risk by leaving them intact was too great.

It does sound as if it’s mostly hormones affecting her behaviour. Especially since she has had some false pregnancies. Their bodies actually go through some physical changes during those. They really believe they are pregnant!

Some desexed female rabbits can still be the dominant one in a pair or group – and may hump, be a little aggressive, or mark territory – but it’s not as intense as when left intact.

The only real options to cool her down are to house her separately or have her spayed really.

[sarahthegemini]

She needs to be spayed because her chance of developing cancer is incredibly high otherwise. It’s invasive but so long as you give adequate pain relief, she’ll be fine.

[Mikey]

Its not that shes frustrated that she cant have babies, she is acting out aggressively because she is hormonal. She will remain this way or get worse until she is spayed

[Author]

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