tunnelwell,
all rabbits have fur in their stomachs because they lick themselves & their partners to keep their coat in good condition.
This passes straight through provided that the stomach & bowels are working properly & causes no problems.
Problems with fur balls only happen when the rabbit's stomach & bowels slow down, which can be for many reasons. A severe gut slow down is called stasis, is thought to be the result of
minor blocks in most cases.
The article
did say that fresh pineapple juice should only be given under a vets instructions.
My own rabbit Benjie has just gone through a period of high risk of fur ball block. He's moulting heavily, he has an illness called snuffles which can give severe headaches,
(pain) he's been
stressed out of his mind by a fox in the garden, building work nearby shaking the house like a mini earthquake, his 1st. experience of thunder & lashing torrential rain. He was eating &
drinking less & passing fewer smaller poohs - an early sign of gut slow down.
I gave him lots of bramble leaves with his hay & hawthorn twigs to eat = fibre. He's picking up nicely with no blocks (fingers crossed) & the fur is passing through with no issues.
A large block like the one described, takes a long time to break up anyway. This
single account could eaily be that all the treatment given previously had started to work, & the pineapple was just co incidental.
Experiments have been done with fur ball poops steeped in pineapple juice & it was found to have no effect on the fur at all, it just helped to break up the food in the hard ball - something which can be achieved by other fluids.
On the other hand we
know that foods with high sugar content eg fruit can cause "bad bacteria" in the caecum to take over & that may cause equally serious life threatening conditions in rabbits.
Rabbits vary a lot in the amount of sugar their gut can tolerate. My own experience has been of a rabbit who had an incurable gut infection which caused so much scarring it could no longer contract. A high fibre diet based on the wild rabbit diet, combined with drugs for the last 2 years, kept him stasis free, & fur ball free, although he was at massive risk of both. For the 6 years of his life, even the vets consider him to be a "miracle bunny".
As other people whose rabbits had severe stasis issues from many issues tried this diet, they also found less frequency of stasis & it was milder. I have now personally followed up about 80 buns who have been helped. Even buns with such severe conditions as megacolon are living beyond expectation.
Yes, rabbits are perfectly capable of eating fresh pineapple. Anything other than fresh pineapple or fresh jucice destroys the enzymes in it. Some people give it without issues.
I can see a much safer & natural way to prevent fur balls from
ever forming, & which has now been tried on over
80 buns at high risk.
You can see
some very early results on here.
http://forums.rabbitrehome.org.uk/s...ried-given-your-stasis-prone-buns-tree-leaves
Please note that unlike the article my beliefs are based on the results from many rabbits.