Behavior: Spayed female acting like unspayed females...

[TinysMom]

As many of you may know, Amy, Undergunfire, was here for a visit for a few weeks and brought her rabbits. When she returned home, she took Marlin with her and I am watching Mallory, Morgan and Madilyn.

I didn't have much interaction with the rabbits while Amy was here - she was taking total care of them - but the few times I watched Madilyn, I found myself wondering if she really was spayed (I know Amy has the paperwork on it). She just acted much like my unspayed females in some ways - it is hard to put my finger on.

Yesterday she was mounting Mallory just like my unspayed girls will do to each other when they want to breed. I mean - EXACTLY like it. I didn't flip her to look at her privates to see if she showed the same symptoms there. I figured she wasn't used to me and that wasn't fair to her.

Will a spayed doe still mount others - not so much to show dominance but to show a "need to breed"? (Sorry I can't find a better term for it for the board).

I've watched enough does to recognize when it is dominance and when it is really breeding-related. There is a difference - slight - but still there. In this case, she was approaching Mallory from the front and showing him what she wanted as he didn't seem to get it when she approached him from the back.

I'm also wondering if when they spayed her they might have missed something and it could cause this behavior?

It isn't a big deal to me....and I've only had one other spayed doe before but she was pretty mild mannered.

Help?

Peg

 

[NZminilops]

YES! Things can be missed in a spay, it happened with Lucky. She was spayed and living with her neutered male friend BunBun, but still acting exactly as she was before. I was concerned and took her back to the original vet clinic who asured me he did the job correctly.

I didn't trust him so I went for a second opinion at another clinic, the vet there did a serious of xrays and ultra sounds etc and concluded that the original vet had missed about half of what needed to be taken out. She was then spayed again and now she's much more like how I expected.

The original vet did say before Lucky was spayed that because it's not an opperation he performed often that he couldn't give me a 100% chance of success, whatever that meant. I wont go into what happened to that vet but I will say he was very sorry .

I'm not medically minded so I can't say how or why the first vet missed so much, or how it affected Lucky and if it was health threatening, but I'm never going back there again!