Spaying

[LLP2937]

Hello everyone. I was hoping to get some tips on spaying. I have a 5.5 month old New Zealand rabbit. She is going for her exam Saturday and then I will schedule her spay. The vet I am taking her to offers the laser procedure which comes with a short recovery time. What are some things I should do to prepare for her recovery? She has a large cage and a blanket and stuffed animal where she sleeps. Her litter box is made of a small storage container and it does not have high walls, but she does like to hop into it. Should I take off of work to watch her? Will she scratch at her incision site? I’m obviously nervous thank you!!!

[JoeyThumper]

I was told to only put down paper for my ones post surgery. And get some sweet treats to encourage eating I used banana

[Sirius&Luna]

I don’t know anything about a laser procedure as opposed to a normal spay… but here are my general tips for a regular spay:

– It might be good to have the first day off to monitor her if you can – some rabbits take a while to eat after surgery but it is super important to get them eating ASAP, so it could be helpful to be there to monitor and syringe feed if necessary
– Make sure she eats before and right up to the surgery
– Make sure you’re sent home with painkillers for her after the surgery
– Stock up on her favourite veg and treats. Lots of bunnies don’t want to eat after spays, but the quicker they start eating the better. They must eat within 8 hours of the spay, so make sure you have critical care in case she doesn’t voluntarily eat
– Give her the option of soft blankets to lie on
– Clean the hutch and litter trays extra regularly so the wound doesn’t get infected
– Watch out that she isn’t biting or playing with the wound
– Rearrange her free-roam area to be more limited, and take out or modify obstacles so she is not tempted to do a lot of jumping or climbing. This can tear/strain the incision site, delaying healing and potentially injuring it. Even if she feels like she is OK to jump and run, her incision site may think otherwise.
– Do what you can to encourage hay eating. The sooner she begins eating hay again, the better. Each rabbit has its own recovery time, but if swapping through fresh hay more frequently seems to do the trick, do that for a couple days.

[Nutmeg]

Everything S&L said above…. I even bought a very small bag of alfalfa hay to try to encourage eating as she wasn’t eating much so I wasn’t worried about the added calories.
I ended up needing to force feed critical care as she did not want to eat anything – which was a pain in the butt as the vet said she had to take her pain killer / anti inflammatory mix medication with food in her stomach, but she was in pain and didn’t want to eat, but she needed to eat to get the pain meds…. *SIGH* lol

Trust me when I say that no mater how much you prepare yourself for the fact that she wont want to eat after, you are still going to freak when it happens. I sat beside her for hours just waving a bit of hay / Kale until she would get mad enough that she ripped it out of my hands and would nibble.

** Some vets will keep them until they see them poop and eat something. As your vet seems to be more advanced they may offer this.

I ended up timing her spay so that I took the Thursday and Friday off work and then had the weekend…. Her appetite actually got better once she was done her 3rd day of paid meds as I think they were making her feel a bit gloopy.

The second hardest part was keeping her confined in her cage for over a week as she was feeling better, but the vet was worried she could still tear something by running around too much… they told me 100% cage confinement for 10 days… I started letting her have an hour of limited roaming time – where I can watch her like a hawk – on day 7.
Not that I’m telling you to ignore your vets instructions… but your situation might be different.

Good Luck! It is for the best for her

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