Should your pet rabbit be neutered? Learn the 7 Benefits when you Spay or Neuter Your Pet Rabbit.Â
Rabbits are beautiful creatures, and having them as pets is an amazing experience. These little furballs bring a lot of happiness and joy to your life. But this joy comes with some responsibility. Being a pet owner, you are responsible for providing your pets food, shelter, and health care. Getting your rabbits spayed or neutered is recommended if you don’t plan on breeding them.
This article provides details of the various benefits of spaying and neutering in rabbits.
Spay or Neuter Your Pet Rabbit: 7 Benefits
Why do rabbits need spaying/neutering?
Having rabbits as pets is like having kids at home. It is really fun and joyful! But things aren’t always very easy. Whether you have a male or female rabbit, they will show unusual behaviors when they are of a certain age. These behaviors invoke when your rabbits become mature and come of age. Their genitals start releasing specific hormones, making boundaries, producing sounds, attracting partners, and looking for ways to slip out of the house looking for their mate.
These hormones provide some dangers in older animals. They might lead to severe diseases, like ovarian tumors, cancers of reproductive organs, and other related issues. Therefore, veterinarians usually recommend spaying females and neutering males to prevent such problems. Let’s talk about other benefits of getting your rabbits spayed or neutered.
Benefits of spaying or neutering your pet rabbit
Let’s consider the many benefits of spaying or neutering your rabbit concerning its health and behavior. Removing the genitals from your rabbits provides a healthier and much calmer attitude when you are not looking to breed them.
Following are some benefits of neutering or spaying your pet rabbits.
Medical and health benefits
Unneutered and unspayed rabbits have been noted to have a higher risk of developing mammary or prostate cancer which would decrease their life expectancy. Apart from these tumors’ growth, there is a severe chance of developing female uterine infections that would render the pet more prone to systemic diseases.
Increased life expectancy
Neutering and spaying remarkably improves your pet rabbits’ life expectancy. Research and studies show that the rabbits with their genitals removed survived longer and had better and healthier lives than those who were unneutered or unspayed.
Studies also highlighted that the spayed or neutered rabbits kept better behaviors. They remain calmer and more serene than the others who were not spayed or neutered.
Reduced disease transmission
There are some diseases that are transmitted through sex. These are called venereal diseases. One such disease, vent disease, often passes easily from one rabbit to another. And this occurs between rabbits of the same sex, as well.
If you get your pet neutered, there is a reduced risk of venereal disease transmission, besides other medical conditions. Venereal diseases can spread horizontally to other pets from the infected ones. Neutering or spaying your rabbits helps you prevent disease transmission and protect them from developing any disease associated with sex.
Behavioral calmness
Having the genitals removed in your rabbit adds a general sense of calmness and smoothness in its behavior. This helps make it more emotionally available for you and connecting with you on much deeper levels. Most know this as bonding. Having your pet calm and easy to play with allows you to release your day’s stress and rejuvenates your energy to do more than you thought you could.
Preventing hormonally induced behaviors
Having your pet rabbit neutered or spayed decreases its hormonal-induced behaviors. These include mounting, urine spraying, aggression, territory marking, and all other associated behaviors that add up due to these hormones. After neutering your rabbit, you might notice this change when you leave it at home. Most owners find this helps ease their mind that it will not create havoc after you leave for your office.
Easy to train
Spayed or neutered rabbits remain calmer, and thus you can train them more easily. Training your rabbit to the litter box happens easier, more efficiently, and comfortably after the surgery than you can do before surgery. Rabbit show an increased tendency in rabbits to learn new commands after undergoing genital removal surgery. This happens because hormonal changes don’t interfere with their behavior or shift their attention.
Population control
If you are not looking for any breeding activity or want to control the population of rabbits, you should definitely consider getting your rabbits neutered or spayed. This helps prevent accidental mating when females are alongside males, helping curb overpopulation. A female gives birth to 1 to 12 younglings, which are pretty challenging to handle and manage when you already have your hands occupied with already available ones.
Age of spaying/neutering your rabbit
There is a specific age limit when you should consider spaying/neutering your pet rabbit to prevent unnecessary behavior induction. It would help if you considered spaying at the minimum age of 4 months or six months for females. On the other hand, males can be neutered at 3 ½ months. You can also consider the surgical procedure at a later age, but at that age, the hormonal behaviors might have set in, and that might be difficult to adjust later.
It is best to follow the minimum age limit to train your rabbit to your needs and expectations. Otherwise, you might have to deal with certain unwanted behaviors. Apart from behavioral issues, medical issues also weigh in early spaying and neutering. Genital tumors are more common in rabbits than in other animals.
Things to consider before and after spaying/neutering
In rabbits, you must give them their regular food and diet before surgery which is not advised in other pets such as dogs and cats because of the rabbits’ anatomy that asks them to have something in their digestive tract to keep them alive during anesthesia and surgery.
Your veterinarian will ask for a few blood tests before proceeding to surgery.
After the successful surgery, be sure to ask for the diet you need to observe in your rabbit for the next few days and care for the surgical site. Your rabbit needs extra care until the wound is treated and the sutures are removed from the site.
Spaying or Neutering Your Pet Rabbit
Having your rabbit spayed or neutered for these many benefits makes sense. It improves his health, and he may bond better with you when he doesn’t have the hormonal activity distracting him. Your vet should help you make the best decision about your rabbit’s individual needs. In fact, you might discuss your options at that next vet checkup.
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