Rabbit Too Small to Spay?

[Amy D.]

Hi guys! We currently have three rabbits. Luxa is 8 months and spayed. Finnegan will be neutered when he is 6 months (he's almost 4 months now). We also have Finnegan's litter mate, a little female, and I mean little. She is a Netherland Dwarf, and she is easily less than half the size of her brother. I am in serious doubt that she will ever be near 2 pounds.

So, my question is, what are the risks of spaying her? Do they still outweigh the risk of not spaying her?

Thanks!

 

[JBun]

The risks of not spaying a non-breeding female rabbit, is a high probability of developing uterine cancer. I don't know that being smaller makes it more of a risky surgery. I think the risk of a bad reaction to anesthesia just depends on the individual rabbit and it's health, independent of it's size. For being a small rabbit, I think some less experienced vets may not want to spay such a small bun just due to size and it making the surgery a bit more difficult, but a good vet shouldn't have any problems with it.

You could always have blood work done to make sure she is healthy before spaying her.

 

[Sindri27]

I have a small female netherland and our vet told us to try and get her to 2 lbs before we had her spayed but we couldn't. She was spayed and it went really well. She weighed 1 pound 6 ozs. Like JBun said you shouldn't have a problem when you go to a good vet with rabbit experience like I did. Best of luck!

 

[Amy D.]

Thanks! We do have a really good vet (who is actually a rabbit owner), but these medical things always make me nervous

 

[Nancy McClelland]

Normal to be nervous. We have had from Nethies to a Checkered Giant neutered without any problems. I did wait on a couple of our smaller bunnies til they were a year old. What the key ingredient to the equation is a good vet that does a lot of spays. I used to drive my females 40 miles one way to the vet I liked, and the males were all done in town as there were 3 vets I trusted for the neuter.

 

[Leopold_Ruby]

No extra risk really. Vets I worked for would foght for small spays and all hated big dog spays.

 

[Amy D.]

Ah, good. Our vet is the area go-to guy for rabbit fixing, so I'm confident now. Phew. When our older rabbit was spayed, I called the vet every 30 minutes pretending that it was my 10 year old daughter who was worried, not me lol. Yeah, I have issues