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Forum BEHAVIOR Advice for a young sexually active doe

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    • Treori
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         Hiya guys, been a while since I have been on here

        OK, since i last posted, Freya (my rex) has been to the vets, had her first full health check up, nails clipped, and is fully innoculated. I have her booked in for next month for her spay as I thoguht it would be prudent to anticipate when she would roughly start to become hormonal AND be a good weight to have her surgery.

        Te problem is as of two nights ago, she seems to be very sexually mature. Circling my (and my sons) feet constantly, tongiht she has begun grunting with each hop she takes, and as I have been ignoring her ‘flirting’ with me she has begun to ramp it up, i.e taking a running jump at me on the sofa and ending up nose to nose sitting on my chest (made me laugh the first two times). She has started getting naughty about not using her litter trays for pee BUT she only seems to have the urge to wee on the spots I sit (trying to cover over my scent) but she hasn’t done it since the last time I ‘sent her to bed’ for an hour when she did it.

        The thing is I am unsure as to whether I can get her spay moved up, She was weighing 2.2kg on Wednesday (about 4.8lbs) and she is barely 3 and 1/2 months old.

        Also is there anything I can do to make her more comfortable until her hormones have died down? She seems so much more tense and at times she looks genuinley distressed so I can only assume her urges are making her uncomfortable. If she was a buck I would tease and tempt her with a soft toy, but I am unsure on what I can do to help a doe at this time. So far she has never bit me or my son and she is showing no signs of being sexually agressive.

        So yeah, any advice on the weight/spay, and how to make her more comfortable would be great. Thanks


      • LBJ10
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          I wouldn’t worry about her weight since smaller breeds would weigh less than she does now when they are full grown. The behavior is likely bunny puberty showing its head. What is wrong with giving her a stuffed toy? You never know, she might take her frustrations out on it anyway.


        • hannaroo
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            A soft toy may help for a doe as they also hump! Just make sure she doesn’t ingest any of it! My advice would be to sit tight! Hormones are a pain but it won’t be forever


          • Treori
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              Thanks guys.
              So a stuffed toy might help her too? Excellent. I just don’t want her suffering while we wait this period out. (she is in her cage for the night and has spent the past 10 minutes not moving an inch, just staring at me…. it’s getting kinda disconcerting considering how rarely rabbits blink XD haha)


            • tanlover14
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                I know exactly what you mean! I just had my female spayed (we had to wait until 6 months) and boy was just a hormonal mess!

                If you can push yourself to wait out the time until it’s closer to 6 months I would wait. Or at least until 4 1/2 or 5 months. Typically vets like to wait because the estrogen can help to build up their bones.

                My girl was a total mess also. Circling, grunting, territorial as all heck! But now that she is spayed, I’m glad we waited (even though it was torture). She is healthy and happy and about a week after her spay she was back to not being a horrible little hormonal brat!


              • Treori
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                  Lolz, I don’t know if I can wait another 3 months to get her done and another month for her to calm down. It’s not so bad for my son, except when he is home she goes on mad urine marking sprees (and ALWAYS on my spots, not his) she doesn’t do this when he is at school or in bed though and she only circles his feet when he is standing. With me though she has ramped up the flirting. I’m absolutely covered in scratches tonight because she would not leave me alone.

                  She runs at me, leaps and then scrabbles all over my face, neck and arms. She did bite me today too (first time) luckily she was surprisingly gentle haha, And she goes crazy on any clothing I am wearing (bare arms or legs are fine, but all clothing must die apparently).

                  I did try her with a soft toy, she dug at it a few times, and then threw it as far away from her as she could before she leapt onto my chest and leant bodily against my face (her current favourite perch at the moment, I know some rabbits enjoy sitting in laps… but she is being ridiculous lolz).

                  I will speak to the vet in the morning, Im only online now so I can check my bank balance to make sure I can afford her spay this month (I can but money will be tight until next pay day)

                  Anyone got any tips on how to distract her attention onto the soft toy instead of my face? I did attempt the trick that works with bucks, but she looked at the toy like it was mental. (you circle HER with the toy to ‘flirt’ and then generally let nature take its course)

                   

                  ~Edit~ Oh, would lavander help? Fresh lavander? I know it’s supposed to chill bunnies out but I’m unsure if that applies for hormonal messes.


                • tanlover14
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                    Hahahah, I know your pain. I have a feeling you MAY have to wait at least one month though. I would ring your rabbit-savvy vet and bring her in for a checkup and see when the vet will feel comfortable doing the procedure! My other girl was done at 4 1/2 months and she came through perfectly fine!


                  • kcomstoc
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                      Wow females sound like terrors lol Caleb wasn’t nearly this bad, he didn’t circle or grunt or anything but he did have his teddy bear (he still has it so if he ever feels “in the mood”) to keep him ummmmm occupied lol. But he never tried it on us, weird…..or maybe we just got extremely lucky


                    • Beka27
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                        You may need to limit her playtime until she can be spayed if she is being that aggressive right now. It’s not ideal, but it’s only for the short term.

                        How sure are you of her age? 3.5 months is really young for a female to be that nutty. I do think that 4.5 to 5 months is going to be the youngest the vet will spay. I wouldn’t be comfortable having the surgery done sooner than that.


                      • Treori
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                          @Tanlover, she was at the vets on Wednesday for her full check and to get inoculated etc so we know she is in perfect health

                          @kcomstoc, I’ve been told that males are easier to get along with during this period if you can stand the spraying of course

                          @Beka, I’ve started doing that and I hate it already. I feel so bad restricting her at all because she is pretty much free range, but I suppose its a good thing, because once she is spayed and her hormones have calmed down I will begin looking about to get her a playmate (gonna do the longer bonding process by having cages and runs next to each other)

                          Yeah I’m 100% sure of her age, I was extremely surprised when she started, she had been circling one night, and I thought it was different from when she dances for me, the next night she had begun to grunt with each step/hop she took, NOW that grunting is a warning she is about to run and leap onto me again (the grunting gets louder as she begins to run, gives me a little chance to get my arm out the way). She just seems SO tense now. One day she was a chilled out bun that didn’t like being overly touched and would prefer to sit in your vicinity the next day she is like a little parrot trying to peach on my shoulder and staying there while grunting in my ear.

                          I hate seeing her sitting there almost quivering with tension. She also has worked out how to open her cage door this morning -_- So I NOW have a horny bunny that can also escape her cage when I’m not looking and my only warning that she is about to get friendly with my face is the grunting coming at me fast XD I’m thinking laying a ;trap; of rabbit treats in a circle around me might stop her in her tracks haha


                        • Beka27
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                            Don’t feel bad for having to restrict her. What kind of cage does she have? Can you attach an xpen to allow some additional “safe” exercise space for her?


                          • Treori
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                              She has just a normal cage, with the plastic bottom (the biggest one I could get though so she still has lots of growing room) I need to buy a pet pen for her, I will need to get two actually for when I do get her ‘friend’.

                              I ‘procured’ some lavender (one of my neighbours has a few plants that grow absolutely wild, so she gave me a big handful) I searched about and found the site I had found before that sites the medical benefits of certain herbs on rabbits and lavender is an antidepressant and is calms tense or upset bunnies. Less then five minutes after munching on some of the lavender she is binkying happily (something she has rarely done since she came into maturity actually).

                              Spoke to the vets, she was booked for her spay on the 17th, and as her health check was fine on Wednesday and her weight is good etc, they have moved the date forward to the 8th.

                              Awww, the lavender is definitely working After having a few random binkys, she is chilling out and looking a bit more relaxed even though my son is home from school


                            • tanlover14
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                                She definitely sounds like my Nora girl before her spay! They can be total tyrants can’t they!?? And I swear with Nora it happened overnight! She was the sweetest thing EVER. And then one day she was just NUTS. Circling, grunting, nipping, and boxing her paws whenever you came into her area. As Beka said, don’t feel bad about limiting her space. As miserable is Nora was, I don’t think giving her more area would have been best for her because she became insanely territorial over ANY area she went into and claimed it all as hers. We had her in a pet store cage and then play time in an x-pen and she wouldn’t let ANYONE in with her ever. She took it all over. Those hormones can be a killer!

                                Kcom – don’t feel that way! Hahaha. My other girl Sidney never showed any of these signs (we got her done at 4 1/2 months) so not everyone has to deal with those horrible female hormones.

                                Good luck, Freya!!


                              • Treori
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                                  Oh I’m lucky she hasn’t gone territorial insane actually
                                  I made sure that the kid knew that her cage is completely off limits. He is NEVER allowed to put his hands in there, and I only do it to put food in, or if she is out the cage, to clean it out properly/remove her litter tray and clean it.

                                  But yes, one morning she was fine, chilling on her side near me, a few hours later she was circling my feet like she was demented and a couple hours after that, she was grunting like mad. My friends think it’s hilarious when I describe what she has been doing.

                                  I just rearranged the part of the living room she has free access to, so she has been busy nosing through the new layout (I had the feeling she was getting bored because her chewing had ramped up, and since moving the boxes about, she has been happily attempting to destroy them again instead of my carpet )


                                • Treori
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                                    Update.

                                    Well Freya got her spay today.
                                    The vet said she woke up very quickly afterwards and she was eating happily before I had even taken her carrier off the counter to take her home (such a little food monster, it had NOTHING to do with the fact I had grabbed a handful of fresh oxeye daisies for her…. one of her favourite treats )
                                    She looks all scruffy and I can see she is extremely uncomfortable. The problem is while the operation itself went smoothly and so far her recovery has been excellent they found something when they opened her.

                                    The vet has no idea what it is and I have the option of sending it into the lab for tests to find out if its benign or not (going to see if my gran can lend me the cash to afford to do that, her spay has drained me of cash this fortnight) basically she described it as looking like a little bladder that was filling and emptying itself (I assume in time to her heart beat). It was attached to her womb and there were fibrous connective tissue connecting it to her gut as well.

                                    So they removed it and I have to keep an extra close eye on her eating, pooping and drinking for the next ten days because they had to remove it from the gut itself. I’m gonna contact the breeder though, it’s a good thing she is a house pet and not a breeding show rabbit because that could have caused some severe problems.

                                    I have also potentially found a breeder with babies available in 4-6 weeks time, just waiting to sex the babies to see if there are any bucks (I have chosen to go with french lop this time, the litter Im waiting on are red agouti butterflies, normal and broken)

                                    I seriously can’t wait for these hormones to die down though, I haven’t been able to sit on the floor with her for a week now because ever time I did she would flick/spray urine on me -_-


                                  • LBJ10
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                                      Oh dear, so it was a cyst of some kind? Hopefully you can learn what it is and it won’t cause any problems in the future. Glad to hear everything else went well. I’m sure she will be much “nicer” once her hormones has settled.


                                    • Treori
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                                        Well the vet was quite insistent that she didn’t know what it was, so she would refer to it as a cyst like object.

                                        yeah she is OK with me now my sons in bed. She even came out her cage by herself (not too happy with her doing that, because she can barely walk, let along jump out her cage) but she is laid out on the floor, The carpet and underlay must be comfier for her possibly, or maybe she just wanted some company


                                      • Beka27
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                                          I’m glad she’s through the spay safely and that “thing” was removed. It’s not even like she’s an older rabbit, you said she’s only about 4 months, so I don’t honestly know what could have developed that quickly. Cancerous cells are more aggressive, but again…. She’s so young!

                                          Keep us posted.


                                        • Treori
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                                            Thanks, and yeah she is turning 4 months old tomorrow actually.
                                            The vet was clear, it wasn’t a lump, she described it as a bladder which filled and emptied by itself with no intervention from her.
                                            So it could quite possibly be a weak wall of one of the blood vessels (kinda like a hernia). I picked her because she had a floppy ear tip and was apparnetly the only one. The breeder said it was definitely not caused by damage or over grooming but since I last spoke to him a couple weeks ago he said the rest of the little are now getting floppy ear tips too (these are pure bred rex rabbits, no lop or anything like that in the blood lines) so I am wondering if its something genetic. I need to tell him about this anomaly because the others in the litter were all sold as show/breeding stock and if they develop something like this then it could aversely affect them

                                            You can barely tell she has invasive surgery yesterday though, she has recovered very well and very quickly. She is munching like mad, she is walking a bit funny though, keeping her knees together basically and she is finding it easier to hop now, yesterday and this morning she would try to ‘walk’ around which looked very weird. She came to me when I called her name and offered to give her a stroke, which she accepted graciously, And she finally drank something this morning.

                                            I’ve checked her wound and its clean (she has given it a lick) but it’s a lot bigger then I expected to be honest. I thought she would have a neat scar like a cat spay, but it seems very large and the scar she will have will be very thick too (think the thickness of a french fry).

                                            So far seen no hormonal behaviour though, but I’m sure she will start up with the sexual advances at my arms and face once the pain and discomfort dies down and she is able to jump onto the couch again.

                                            All in all Freya is doing really well

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                                        Forum BEHAVIOR Advice for a young sexually active doe