Spay after care - reduced space for a spicy free roamer

[MellowsMum]

Hey All,

Many thanks to the people that have supported me with advice after Mellow super stressful visit to the vets for her spay.

So Mellow had her Spay 2 days ago.

She takes her meds each morning by them being squirted on to fruit and veg.

Her recovery has been great (fingers crossed it doesn’t change).

She was pooping, peeing, moving around and eating from the moment we got her home.

Poos back to normal from yesterday morning.

Her wound is good.

I now have a new issue, Mellow is a free roam house bun except for sleeping in the spare room where I close the door at night.

The vet gave me aftercare advice but nothing mentioned housing post spay.

We have a dog pen that I brought her when we where house training her.

She is now housed in this in her room.

I’ve removed her house as she likes to jump on it, I’ve also removed her very high sided litter tray and put down pee pads.

My new issue is that she’s angry at being penned in.

She’s constantly biting on the pen to get out, she’s yanking on the door - she’s an independent bun and she wants out.

I’ve tried rotating toys, that keeps her busy for 5 minutes before she starts yanking again.

She normally love to lay at my feet while work and getting lots of pets, so I thought maybe getting in the pen with her would help, she runs and grunts at me if I do this.

I’ve read up and some people say to keep them in pens for 10-14 days.

I can’t see her mental health lasting that long before she goes full spice!

I know she needs to heal up and don’t want to put back her recovery but how long should I Keep her in the pen for?

Does anyone have any experience post spay with a frustrated free roamer?

 

[BrownieDaisyandJasmine<3]

My bunnies were also free roamers initially but due to some issues i had to pen them up. They were exactly like your bunny for a week or so, but after that they settled in. So i would suggest you to keep her in the pen for at least 14 days because if you let her free roam, and she gets into trouble somewhere and hurts herself, then it will be more troublesome. She might be angry at you for a few days or maybe even weeks but eventually you will let her out, right? And the way you have described it, I think you two have quite a strong bond so making up with her will be extremely easy in my opinion.

Hope everything goes well with your bun!

 

[John Wick]

I would keep her in there for at least a week, and this is based on things I've read from other's experiences (as I have never been with a female through spay recovery).

For pen biting, it can be helpful to binderclip a sheet or something to the outside of the pen and create the illusion of a wall-- I've found this to be successful to stop pen biting:



Re: her mental health, again from my limited experience and knowing others', I think she will be fine. One of my rabbits (Wick) actually broke one of his fingers a few months ago and had to go in a small pen for 1 month straight for recovery. He is now back in that pen due to some secondary complications. He is usually a free-roam rabbit, and he has been fine throughout the long pen-restriction periods. The distress she may experience being in a restricted space for a week or so is minimal compared to the distress if she injures the spay wound.

 

[JBun]

It will really depend on what she does if she's allowed to free roam. If she's pretty sedate and will just lay around, I wouldn't see it as a problem. But if she would be inclined to jump up on things or zoom off doing bunny 500's, then you would need to keep her confined, as it's those kind of things that could risk her pulling at where she's been stitched up and causing injury and bleeding.

If you do need to continue to keep her confined, you may be able to get away with strictly supervised free roam time. If with you right there, she won't be inclined to try and dash off. And with the bar chewing, you could try putting up cardboard panels to prevent it, and it also would provide her with the activity of ripping the cardboard apart This is provided she doesn't like to ingest the cardboard.