by Elizabeth Armstrong-Brown

Created on: January 15, 2009

Most rabbits will reach sexual maturity between the age of 3 and 8 months, depending on their genetics. As soon as a rabbit's sexual hormones start flowing, you can expect to see major behavior changes in your pet rabbit. Such behaviors could include your rabbit circling around your legs, honking and appear to be very needy and will follow you around all the time; or they could include urine spraying or aggressive behavior by your rabbit.

By having your pet rabbit spayed or neutered you will be helping your rabbit to calm down and be much easier to handle. A female that is unsprayed has more than an 80% chance of developing reproductive cancer by the time she is three years old. A male that is unneutered will usually spray to mark their territory, similar to unneutered cats.

Other benefits of spaying or neutering your pet rabbit will be avoiding urinary tract infections, uterine cancer, uterine disease, mammary gland disease, testicular cancer, as well as preventing any unwanted pregnancies. Along with her intact female descendants, a rabbit that is not spayed can produce more than 1300 offspring in a single year, or 94 million over the course of five years.

It also makes your rabbit calmer and happier. Sadly, rabbits who are not spayed or neutered and who start to misbehave due to the rise in their hormones at puberty are often the rabbits that are abandoned at shelters or even released into the wild, because their owners do not understand and falsely believe that their once lovable pet has somehow become deranged overnight!

However no surgery is entirely risk-free and you should make the decision to spay or neuter your pet rabbit on an individual basis. Always speak with an experienced rabbit veterinarian first about your rabbit's particular health before having him or her spayed or neutered.

However, a few of the benefits of having your rabbit spayed or neutered are as follows:

They are less likely to become aggressive or to act out due to the increased surge of sex hormones. They are also less likely to exhibit mounting and urine spraying behaviors.

Those rabbits that are spayed or neutered usually have less litter box issues than pet rabbits that are not spayed or neutered.

Pet Rabbits that have been spayed or neutered are much calmer and do not suffer from sexual frustration like pet rabbits that are not spayed or neutered.

Litter box odors of spayed and neutered rabbits are less offensive smelling than those of pet rabbits who have not been spayed or neutered.

You will be able to house pet rabbits of the opposite sex together, without worrying about unwanted pregnancies, so long as both rabbits have been spayed or neutered.

On the other hand, pet rabbits that are of the same sex will get along fine and will not fight with each other as much as those pet rabbits that are not spayed or neutered.

Learn more about this author, Elizabeth Armstrong-Brown.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.