My vet said I shouldn't spay my rabbit

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thegooch69

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, New York, USA
I took Reeses to the vet because I think she is going through a fake pregnency. After he exaimed her he told me that he doesn't like spaying rabbits because they have to be put under anastesia(spelling?) and be cut open, and he just doesn't think it's necessary enough to put her through all that.

Should I listen to him or get another opinion?
 
Get another vet. An experienced rabbit vet will not have a problem putting a rabbit under and doing the operation. Spaying your bun is a good idea, and this could be an indication that you should look for a more experienced rabbit vet. ;)

_____________
Nadia
 
I guess it's a good idea to call around and see who has better experience then. The vet I went to also charged around $400 for the whole operation. Is that about right?
 
it is my understanding, and someone who knows better then me will post soon i just know it, that spaying is important because of uterine cancer. I do see where the doctors worry comes from because it is always a risk to put a rabbit under anesteshia, your risking that the rabbit will tolerate it ok, you risk due to pain that the rabbit will stop eating, you risk infection. But by not spaying you are risking down the line that the rabbit is g oing to get cancer and anything else related to not being spayed. i personally think it is a double edged sword, a possible dammed if you do , dammed if you dont.



I personally had both my rabbits fixed, and thankfully they recoverd smoothly and all is well , but i do know some people who have lost there buns under anesthesia, so it is a personal decision that you need to make after weighing all the options and facts about both. Make sure your vet is rabbit savy, to spay and nueter to me was the right choice for many reasons and i was afraid that something would happen under anesthesia, and while recovering, but everything turned out good. good luck in what you decide to do and there will be many more people on to comment on this subject with many more opinions and facts to make sure yjou are well prepaired to make this decision.



ps - if you do decided to spay dont forget to tell them you WANT pain meds , and find out if your vet will give them and if not , i would find another vet :)
 
thegooch69 wrote:
I guess it's a good idea to call around and see who has better experience then. The vet I went to also charged around $400 for the whole operation. Is that about right?
Click to expand...

oh my god that seems like alot.

i payed around 150.00 for each of mine, Belle was a spay, office visit and pain meds, and Sooty was nueter, pain meds, antibiotics, teeth trimming.



in light of another thread i am going to find out this week what antibiotic was given to him before surgery.l
 
thanks for the info! I found a list of experience vets online from Rabbit Rescue and Rehab. There is a vet not to far from me that I'm going to call and discuss further.
 
Frankly, that vet sounds a little weird. Not saying he's a bad vet, but he obviously isn't very experienced with rabbits.

The only difference between a rabbit going through a false pregnancy and one not is that there is usually more blood during the spay, but that's not a big deal. Also, some prefer to give antibiotics, just to be on the safe side, during a spay.

People talk about uterine cancer, I worry more about pyometra or endometriosis. False pregnancy and pyometra or similar problems go hand-in-hand. Uterine adenocarcinomas are a worry though, of course. 50-80% of unbred (and even bred) females of certain breeds will get it. If one isn't using their rabbit for breeding, I always think that they should be fixed, because of this high percentage. Even if they are used for breeding, generally after they've been retired, I think they should be spayed. Of course that's my opinion and I'm not trying to tell anyone what to do with their retired broad does. :D

I think I've derailed the thread.
 
Ditto what every one else says. Get another vet. A vet who is experienced with rabbits will be more than happy to perform a spay.

Also, it's my experience (at least around where I am), that a vet who charges a lot for a spay or a neuter is trying to discourage people from doing it and is not real comfortable performing the surgery. $400 is way too high for a spay. My vet charges around $150, and I've seen prices averaging from a little below to a little above that.
 
$400 is way out of line. I took Sparky and Scooter to an exotics specialist and they were only $200 each. I agree with everyone else - find another vet.
 
Four hundred dollars is ridiculous! :shock:My rabbit savvy vet charges $90. My vet in San Antonio charged $170 for a spay and I thought that was much.



t.
 
I knew that didn't sound right. When I was there I got the impression they were more of a dog and cat vet and less experienced with exotic pets. Good thing there are a few experienced rabbit vets in my area I can call.
 
Way to listen to your bunny parent instincts! So glad to hear that you're taking the time and effort to call around! Good luck with finding a rabbit-savvy vet for her spay! Let us know how it goes. :)
 
Hi,

As far as spaying....what Ivory said. As usual, accurate and informative info.

As far as thevet saying not to sedate a rabbit for a spay....obviously not a rabbit vet.

As far as antibiotics after surgery....we usually do not unless there is a clinical indication of an infection. One rabbit that we did is Mo...and his rear legs are so messed up he can't sit properly so we were concerned about it with him. The other we did is Dusty...and he had testicular cancer. We did an emergency neuter on him four days after he was admitted to us.

As far as the fee...you have to compare apples to apples. I have done hundreds of spays/neuters. I can tell you from experience that you should get a written estimate and look it over. The high end fees may include a lot of things that your bunny might not need. One possibility is blood work. We generally do not do a blood panel unless there is a suspicion of an underlying issue. We know most of our buns well enough to know if they are healthy or not. If they have been sick, came into rescue in very bad condition or maybe a little older....OK, let's spring for the blood panel. Watch for "extended care" charges. You can expect them if your rabbit stays overnight (ours do not stay after surgery) but some vets charge them if you drop your rabbit off and they use "kennel space". We prefer, and our vets do too, that we get the buns back into familiar territory as soon after surgery as possible. Some vets also charge huge fees for "support therapy". That is nothing more than offering Critical Care with a syringe...and I have seen those fees reach a staggering amount. The lower end fees usually are associated, in this area anyway, with older methods of surgery that require external sutures. We do use conventional surgery for neuters (but no external sutures) but we insist on laser procedures for the girls. There is debate in the vet community over the benefits of laser over conventional when it comes to spays. We have seen it and done it both ways...laser is better. The fees quoted are many times what we call "dumb downs". That means that the fees are meant to cover those people that don't have a clue on how to deal with a recovering rabbit....that is usually not a problem with the people of this forum. Most of the people on this forum know what to do and how to handle their recovering rabbit...so look carefully at a written estimate. You might be shocked....but do remember, most vets do this in order to make sure the animal does get the proper post-op care...not so much to rip someone off. Once a vet learns your skills, they will know what you are capable of doing and that should reflect in the charges.

Randy
 
A bit of a hijack, but Randy, you do see a difference with laser incisions for spays? What kind of difference do you see? Faster heal time, less pain? I'm curious, because my vet clinic has the technology and one of the vets spayed my bun Mocha using it. This was not the rabbit-savvy vet but one who frequently performs routine spay/neuter surgeries on rabbits, she just doesn't feel comfortable doing non-routine surgeries on them. The rabbit vet spayed Fey and Sprite and told me he has not seen any difference in pain amount or heal time with rabbits when using laser incisions, possibly due to their thinner skin, so he doesn't use the laser unless the owners still want it after he informs them of his opinion.

Fey and Sprite did recover faster, but Mocha was also smaller and much younger at them at the time- 4.5 months vs. 1.5 years. And Mocha is a fussy princess, so that could also make a difference, LOL!
 
We do see a difference in laser vs. conventional. We prefer laser even at a higher cost. There is much less blood loss since the laser takes care of most of that when it's cutting. The cut is much cleaner so we don't need those external sutures that either are chewed or come out. There are internal sutures but the final close is strictly tissue glue...and we have never had a problem. The cleaner and more precise cut does seem to heal quicker and we have never had any secondary infections at all. With conventional surgery, we used narcotics for 5 days post-op....with the laser, no more than 3 and many times even less than that. All of our spays are eating within hours after the procedure.Recovery time overall seems to be faster with laser.Personally, there is no debate for me. I just think that laser is a much better way to go. The only down side.....if you want to call it that...is that it would be difficult to determine if a rabbit has been spayed if laser was used. The healing is so clean...and since there is no sutures, there is no "zipper"....that it is hard to tell if surgery was performed by looking at the abdomen. We will continue to go with the laser.

Randy
 
thegooch69 wrote:
I took Reeses to the vet because I think she is going through a fake pregnency. After he exaimed her he told me that he doesn't like spaying rabbits because they have to be put under anastesia(spelling?) and be cut open, and he just doesn't think it's necessary enough to put her through all that.

Should I listen to him or get another opinion?
Click to expand...
That is just bizarre to me, a vet recommmending NOT to do a spay or neuter on a young, healthy animal. Seems like to me a human doctor advising you to smoke cigarettes because it would be stressful not to... That would be wierd advice to me, given about any animal, not jsut a rabbit. I agree with everybody else, definalty not a good vet. I don't think I would take a cat or dog to him/her, either, personally.
 
gentle giants wrote:
thegooch69 wrote:
I took Reeses to the vet because I think she is going through a fake pregnency. After he exaimed her he told me that he doesn't like spaying rabbits because they have to be put under anastesia(spelling?) and be cut open, and he just doesn't think it's necessary enough to put her through all that.

Should I listen to him or get another opinion?
Click to expand...
That is just bizarre to me, a vet recommmending NOT to do a spay or neuter on a young, healthy animal. Seems like to me a human doctor advising you to smoke cigarettes because it would be stressful not to... That would be wierd advice to me, given about any animal, not jsut a rabbit. I agree with everybody else, definalty not a good vet. I don't think I would take a cat or dog to him/her, either, personally.
Click to expand...

I would agree that a vet who recommends not spaying a female rabbit is not rabbit-savvy...but I wouldn't go as far as to judge him or her as not being a good vet.

Case in point: the 2-vet practicewhere we take our 10 catsis awesome. When we got out first bunny, however, they did not want to perform a spay. Neither doctor felt comfortable enough to do thesurgery. (I was pretty ignorant about bunnies at the time...so I interpreted that to mean she did not need to be spayed. And truthfully, they did not seem to view the risk of ovarian cancer great enough to perform a procedure they were not comfortable doing.) They did, however, consent toaltering bunny #2 - a male -one of the vets had donenumerous castrations - just neither of themwere totally confident with invasive surgery like a spay(and laser was not an option).

When our male became ill, they did aLOT of research anddid a mass removal.There did come a point when they said they were no longer comfortabledealing with his case due to their lack of expertise in treating rabbits. They kindly referred us to another vet in town who did have thenecessary experience.

That vet is now thevet for the 4 rabbits in our home. I grilled him with2 pages of questions at an interview and 1st visit. He could tell me how many neuters/spays he performedin an average week, the total number he'd done, andmore. He took the time toanswer every question I had. I knew from that visit he was therabbit-savvy doc for my buns.

But I still take my 10 cats to our original vet practice. They are great vets. They just admit to notbeingbunny specialists and choose not to tackle any surgery they are not comfortable with.

Veterinary medicine, I believe, is far more complex than human medicine. There are so many species of animals that people have as pets from cats & dogs, to horses & goats, to snakes & parrots, to rabbits & ferrets, etc. As you can imagine, each of those animals have different anatomies, needs, illnesses, behaviors, etc. Each responds to medicines and treatments differently. I don't think it is fair to expect any vet to be totally knowledgeable about every one.

So, I would look for a more experienced vet because there are vets who are comfortable performing spays. And any vet who is not will probably not have the knowledge you will need should a serious illness arise in your bunny.
 
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