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Humping - how can i reduce the frequency doe humps the buck? UPDATE..opinions?

Rabbers

Mama Doe
It's driving me (and the buck I think!) nuts. Rolo tries to hump Ozzie an awful lot. He has a bald patch on his back now and has for a quite a while. It's increased a lot this year for some reason - I've been thinking it could be due to her no longer showing symptoms of EC.

I have posted about this before and have always thought it would stop as the spring progressed. But it's still going on!

She does it at night, first thing in the morning before breakfast and evening before dinner the most.

She is (apparently) neutered. He is neutered too. I say apprently as i was told she was by the rescue and the vet can't find any scar on her to suggest she was definitely neutered as it was such a long time ago. They are both 7 and have been together for 6ish years.

I know it's a dominance thing, but it's getting extremely annoying now and he has to constantly try to get away from her. He is showing his age a bit now too, so I worry about him more.
Is there any way i can try to reduce it?

Thanks x
 
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i'm working on a situation like this.
tabitha humps matthew and tries to scare him away from food, and sometimes she just bullies him for fun. she hasn't drawn blood or left bald patches, but she has scared him and pulled out little bits of fur.
when i see her bullying matthew, i tell her no, and chase her off if i can. one day last week, after a particularly bad bout, i shut her in the hutch for a couple of hours and while he stayed in their playpen - this gave him a status advantage, he was more confident and she was more humble for a while when she came out.
 
You can scan to find out if she was neutered? & if spay was incomplete it can cause hormonal probs - my bridge bun Spice, had an incomplete spay & started having phantoms etc.


Failing that - can you feed separately? :D
 
Luckily it's not the feeding that starts her off. In fact I'm not sure what really the trigger is - but i do notice she calms down once she has eaten. If she's intent on humping before the food comes out I have to catch her attention and then she starts eating like she never thought of humping!! But then she also humps through the night (sometimes I can hear them if i have my windows open), so it doesn't seem to be food that's the trigger.

I asked about the scan the last time we were at the vets and they didn't seem to know what I was talking about, although they did mention the fact that some ovary may get left behind after spaying. They did suggest I could have her admitted for a spay and they would be able to see once they opened her up if she was spayed successfully or not, but I didn't really like the idea of that unless I was sure she needed an operation. What's the name of the scan so i can ask again? Also how much does it cost roughly?

I have tried trapping her in the hutch for a while while he roams the garden and has a rest. That has worked in the short term in that she stopped and settled down and was better once she came back out, but it hasn't reduced it at all in the long term.

Thanks for your replies!
 
Luckily it's not the feeding that starts her off. In fact I'm not sure what really the trigger is - but i do notice she calms down once she has eaten. If she's intent on humping before the food comes out I have to catch her attention and then she starts eating like she never thought of humping!! But then she also humps through the night (sometimes I can hear them if i have my windows open), so it doesn't seem to be food that's the trigger.

I asked about the scan the last time we were at the vets and they didn't seem to know what I was talking about, although they did mention the fact that some ovary may get left behind after spaying. They did suggest I could have her admitted for a spay and they would be able to see once they opened her up if she was spayed successfully or not, but I didn't really like the idea of that unless I was sure she needed an operation. What's the name of the scan so i can ask again? Also how much does it cost roughly?

I have tried trapping her in the hutch for a while while he roams the garden and has a rest. That has worked in the short term in that she stopped and settled down and was better once she came back out, but it hasn't reduced it at all in the long term.

Thanks for your replies!


Er it was a scan:oops::lol: I don't know - sorry:oops: I was quoted about £60 - but my vets are pretty ok-priced. In the end, Spice was just opened up - she was re-spayed for free cos they were the vets that had done the first time. If there is any uterine/ovarian tissue left after a spay, I think they can still get tumours
 
thanks. I suspect it's a sort of ultra sound. I've just put her in the hutch again as she was humping him again. I picked her up and put her upstairs, the door is still open downstairs to the garden but she doesn't seem to have worked that out yet. And she's thumping away in the bedroom!

Out of interest, do neutered does still display spraying behaviour? She's never sprayed me but regularly sprays the hutch - i find white marks up the wall and twice I have had to wash him as he's been sprayed!! Poor old chap :love: I find she thumps a lot!

I might go back and ask for this scan again soon!
 
I have asked my vet about an incomplete spay when we were having behavioural problems with Poppy - which we have worked out were just that after 2 years and not an incomplete spay, this can happen but is unusual I hear. The only way to test this properly is to inject the FSH or similar hormone and then do bloods to test the levels to see if the ovaries are stimulated by the injected hormone. My vet enquired about this (and he is already rabbit savy) but unfortunately no one has yet isolated the exact hormone needed in rabbits as they have to test this in cats and dogs. So therefore any bloods done to check hormone levels would be inconclusive as there is no isolated hormone as yet to make this test absolute.

Poppy mounts Nino at times she is feeling insecure in her environment and that her position in the hierarchy in the house (including us hoomans in this group) is under threat. I generally let her do it for a few seconds and then gently push her off. This way she feels she has achieved dominance and will be less likely to feel frustrated by being stopped altogether...but Nino gets less bullied. To be honest, since we have made changes to allow her to feel more secure in her environment she rarely does it anymore. I no longer intervene, he doesn't let her do it anyway. The only time I may stop her is if she mounts his head whilst he is trying to kip!
What has made the biggest difference has been keeping out of their 'assumed territory' in the sitting room - the corner with their litter trays in. She shows a lot of referred aggression towards him if we venture into this corner whilst they are in or near it. So we now wait til they are out of the room or back downstairs in their hutch before invading this 'territory'.
I would try not to intervene unless risk of injury and if you do perhaps use a distraction or gently disperse the behaviour - but if Ozzie is ignoring her behaviour he may have found this is an effective way to deal with her and control it and perhaps you should do the same? You may also find that distracting her with food is becoming a 'learned response' and that she is learning that this behaviour gets her reward.
I understand this is very difficult especially as his back is getting bald, but I would be surprised if this was an incomplete spay and not just a dominance issue related to pecking order and food, and possibly territory also.
Have you tried varying the times you feed or scattering the food around more? I would also perhaps not feed immediately you come out to see them so she doesn't associate your arrival with expectation of food.

Can the vet not feel any scar tissue from a spay? I do wonder if she is spayed at all?? rather than an incomplete spay. I would expect you would need an ultrasound to check for this. Good luck :)
 
The spraying i've just read about does make me wonder if she's spayed at all?? I would ask for an ultrasound and take it from there.

Edited to say : This is a lesson to me to read the WHOLE thread otherwise I end up writing several posts! :lol: Ignore the bit where i've said probably just dominance issues etc....I hadn't read the bit about spraying and not sure if she was actually spayed...I'd assumed she was....and you were talking about an incomplete spay. It could be incomplete or behavioural but as I've said on this post i'd want an ultrasound first just to rule out fully unspayed first. :) Good luck :)
 
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Thanks for your reply again!

I've asked my vet if they will do an ultrasound and they won't, but I'm currently ringing around to see if any of the others do. So I'll keep you all updated. I've also posted in the behaviour section to see if anyone else has a neutered female who still sprays!
 
There has been some progress today on this matter. And I really need your opinions and help on it!
Yesterday I took her back to the vets to ask about blood tests, ultra sounds and possibly a spay. The vet examined her again and said her nether regions were very prominent. I asked whether that's normal and the vet said it could be just her, or it could be that there are some hormones going on to increase the size.
Anyway she said she's ask for more help from an exotic vet and range me back today about it.
She said that if she was displaying this behaviour in a pattern then she would most definitely not be spayed. I.e. humping and then not humping for some days and nesting. Well Rolo doesn’t do that – it’s all the time!
So she said we could have a blood test (at £60-£70!) to test for high levels of oestrogen. If they are low, then she’s just a naughty bunny! If they are high then it means somewhere is making the hormones i.e. ovaries (or remains of), cysts on the ovaries (this would also cause her to display the behaviour continuously, not in a pattern) or sometimes other places can make the hormones such as cells in the adrenal glands ….. or unfortunately a tumour.

So the vet is worried that now as she’s started to do this at a very increased rate than any other year, she’s 7 years old, nothing has changed in her environment and her nether regions are large….. it could be something sinister.

She’s going on hols for a week and will get back to me after asking another rabbit specialist for more advice on what route we should take… i..e whether it’s worth doing the blood tests or whether it’s better just to risk it and book her for an operation.

What are your thoughts!? It all sounds quite scary to me…
 
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