Behavioural Problems- 6 months

Question
Hi! Thanks so much for reading my question. I'll start off with a little background information. I have a female, 6 month old holland lop who gets vegtables, hay and pellets everyday and lives in a large pen/cage indoors. Everyday she gets at least 4 hours of time to play. Latley she has been very moody. She is alternating between weeks where she is very happy, loving, circling around me, kissing me, jumping on my lap and back, and then weeks were she is very mellow, and calm, and finally this week where she has been annoyed at everything. Usually she loves it when i cuddle with her, but now she will soemthimes jump away, and flick her feet at me. Also she usually is good with being picked up, but this week she struggles and thumps when i try to carry her upstairs for her playtime. She even flicked her feet at me when i was giving her a treat. This is very odd behaviour and i was wondering if you knew what it could be casued by. i know that she is close to the age where she should be spayed, but i don't think i will be able to do this until the Summer.

Answer
Dear Catrina,

Your bunny is displaying the typical, hormonal behavior of a teenage bunny who's starting to have mood swings due to false pregnancies and just plain old...hormones.  Spaying will stop these cycles, though there's no guarantee that she'll automatically be cuddly and sweet after spaying.  That's the trouble with the hormones:  they really are part of her personality.

But because unspayed females have a high risk of uterine cancer, this surgery his really important to have done.  You certainly can wait until summer, until she's older.  But just be ready for that roller-coaster ride of hormone-driven moodiness.  She's not much different from a human teenager in that respect.  Just give her extra love when she's grouchy, and she *will* remember that.

Be sure you have a rabbit-savvy vet when the time comes:

www.rabbit.org/vets

Hope this helps.

Dana