Spaying an aggressive female rabbit - would it work

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haeller

haeller

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My family and I have two female rabbits, Mocha and Eva. When we first got them, they got along very well for the first two months. However, mid-way through the third month, Mocha started to hump Eva, who never physically fought back but always ran away. The humping (it occurred randomly with good and bad days) started to become more aggressive. Last week, we placed them in separate cages. Today, we tried letting them come back together again, but Mocha started violently humping Eva after a few minutes.

We're considering getting Mocha spayed in hopes that she calms down. We want to be able to put them back together. We took them both to the vet again and it was confirmed that they were female. However, we were wondering if there were any other bunny owners who had two females and went through a similar situation as ours. What do you recommend? If we only spay Mocha, would the humping stop? Thank you in advance.
 
They have to establish dominance, its going to happen spayed or not to some extent. I don't have spayed rabbits, its a big gamble. I've never known any one that kept spayed girls together either, have had a few pet sells that they spayed them but that was to keep breeding marking in check hopefully. Spaying is never a guarantee.
 
The humping is almost certainly a dominance behaviour. The does are maturing and Mocha is the more dominant of the two. Spaying may ease the problem, but female rabbits are extremely territorial by nature and unless they are in a large colony where they can each claim a territory, dominance behaviour is likely to continue.

In recent years, there has been a strong push by the house rabbit societies etc. not to keep rabbits alone, but in my opinion, housing them together in traditional cages, even if roomy, is just asking for trouble. The dominance may progress from humping to fighting to severe injury and death--probably Eva's.

I see that Rebel Rose is ahead of me. I agree with her remarks about the dangers of spaying.
 

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