Well, this has been one of the hardest weeks I’ve experienced. We adopted two beautiful baby bunny siblings 7 weeks ago: Cloud (male) and Peppercorn (female). Starting a few weeks ago, we discovered Peppercorn had been missexed and was female rather than male and began to panic about her getting pregnant. We separated the pair and only let them together for supervised playtime, brought them both into the vet to get exams and schedule neutering and spaying for each. The vet gave Peppercorn an emergency ultrasound one week ago and nothing showed up; he said they were both definitely ready to have babies, but that nothing was showing up on the ultrasound. Though he also mentioned that if it was too early in the pregnancy, the ultrasound wouldn’t register anything anyway. We scheduled Cloud’s neutering a week after that exam, and Peppercorn’s for the following week.
We brought Cloud in to get neutered two days ago and the most horrific thing happened: he did not come out of anesthesia. The vet was an experienced rabbit vet who said this hadn’t happened in years. He was going to do a necropsy free of charge but believes Cloud may have had an underlying heart condition that was undetectable prior to the surgery. My partner and I were and are still very devastated. He was the runt of the litter, so that may have contributed to things. Anyway, we are so sad for Peppercorn because her best friend and brother is gone.
Now we’re worried about her. About getting her spayed (which we will do, just not for another month or so as she’s barely 4 months old) and whether or not she may, in fact, be pregnant. The chances are slim, I know, but I’m still worried. I’m a former bunny owner, but only had a boy. While we supervised their playtime together the week up to Cloud’s death, he managed to mount her once or twice, but only for a very brief couple of seconds before we pulled him off. Peppercorn seems to be getting along okay without Cloud, having been confused and moody the first day without him. She’s digging even more these days (she’d been very diggy before), especially at the blanket that she and Cloud shared under our bedroom hutch. I’m wondering if we should be worried still about the slim chance of pregnancy, or if she’s just exhibiting normal unspayed female rabbit behavior. She binkies a lot, still, does the bunny 500, and is generally still very active and adventurous. She grunt-moans whenever I try to pick her up and stomps her foot while running away (something she also has done many, many times in the past). She does that now at times when I try to pet her when she isn’t in the mood (particularly when I touch her butt, which I read bunnies take as playfighting).
We’re still reeling from Cloud’s death and also trying to give the surviving bun as much love and attention as we can. We’d love to find her a new friend after she gets spayed, but we also are now understandably very worried about putting her under anesthesia. I am just so stressed and so sad!! It is so unfair to have our baby bunny be taken away so soon and also for Peppercorn to be without her best friend. We’ve given her our stuffed penguin doll that is roughly the size of a bunny, and she’s taken to grooming him, which is unbelievably cute but also breaks our hearts.