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The subject of intentional breeding or meat rabbits is prohibited. The answers provided on this board are for general guideline purposes only. The information is not intended to diagnose or treat your pet.  It is your responsibility to assess the information being given and seek professional advice/second opinion from your veterinarian and/or qualified behaviorist.

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Forum HOUSE RABBIT Q & A Found a ball of fur in rabbits poop

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    • Ashleyann1313
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        Hey everyone! I’m a new rabbit mommy, so all this can be a bit overwhelming, while I was cleaning Flash’s cage today I found an odd looking poo. I decided to look at it and when I took a close look it was a small ball of her fur, outlined in feces. All her other poops look fine I found a few small ones but none with hair. Is this normal?


      • jerseygirl
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          You’ll sometimes get this or poops strung together with fur. They ingest fur because they groom so much. It’s why fibre from hay is important to keep moving everything through.
          Do you ever see her chewing at or pulling her fur?

          You mentioned in your other thread she doesn’t eat much hay. What type does have? What proportion of other feed does she get?


        • Imbrium
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            As a general rule, hair in poop isn’t a problem (though it is a warning sign) – as long as whatever hair is ingested is coming OUT the other end, all is good.  It’s when the hair gets stuck in the GI tract that serious (and life-threatening if not properly treated) problems can occur.

             

            What to do when you see hair in the poop:


            ~ Strive to minimize hair ingestion with regular grooming; during a molt (which happens four times a year, though some molts can be so light they go unnoticed), daily or even twice daily brushing may be needed.

            Personally, I swear by the Furminator for the vast majority of coat types (I suspect it wouldn’t work for wooly breeds).  It comes with a money-back satisfaction guarantee, so if you don’t like it you can always return it. [Notes: They’re crazy expensive in pet stores but can usually be found on eBay/Amazon for $20-25 including shipping.  Any version with a comb width of 2.3” or less should be fine (ie any cat version, the small animal one or the smallest dog one).]

            ~ Help any hair that is ingested move through the digestive tract by encouraging the rabbit to consume lots of hay and water.

            Rabbits often drink more from bowls than bottles, so if you currently have a water bottle, you might try offering water in a bowl as well.  I’ve used a $5 water dispenser from Walmart for ages – it works great, but does need to be emptied/washed out daily (and I usually run it through the dishwasher for a deep cleaning 1-2x a week). [I’m getting ready to upgrade to a pet fountain with a filter, though, as now that I have a trio, I find myself cleaning hay/debris out of the cheap waterer 2-3 times a day.]

            If your bunny’s not a big hay eater, a possible temporary solution is to use a spray bottle to mist a little pile of hay with unsweetened apple juice (assuming the rabbit doesn’t seem overly sensitive to sugars, like if feeding the allowed 1 tsp fruit per 2 lbs body weight per day causes tummy/poop issues – this isn’t very common, but it does happen).  Mist sparingly, as the extra sugars aren’t really healthy and should be very limited; also, make sure to throw out any hay you’ve misted and replace it with fresh hay twice a day or so (to prevent it from getting icky or even moldy from the old juice).

            A long term solution is to find a hay your bunny likes better.  Some bunnies are extremely picky and the taste/texture of hay varies a great deal from one type to the next (and even between cuttings and/or brands of the same kind of hay).  For example, my girls won’t eat any Oxbow hay except oat (which is a pain to feed because the oats have to be pulled out b/c the extra carbs can cause health problems) and they’ll eat KMS Hayloft’s 3rd cut timothy but won’t eat ANY other brand or cut of timothy (3rd cut is softer than 1st or 2nd but also the least nutritious, so I only give it occasionally).  The only other hay they’ll eat is Sierra Valley’s orchard grass.

            If you’ve only ever fed pet store hay, the first thing I’d try is to find some local feed stores – call around and ask them if they would be willing to let you get a little handful of whatever grass hay(s) they sell for your bunny to taste-test before you commit to buying a bale (in my experience, most will).  Rabbits can eat ANY “horse quality” grass hay (“cow quality” can have mildew and stuff in it that would make horses or rabbits very sick – if the store doesn’t say that hay is cow quality then it’s horse quality; most hays are grass hays, but some (like alfalfa and clover) are legume hays, which are unsuitable for adult rabbits other than nursing/pregnant females), though with cereal types like oat, what and rye, the seed heads (oats or w/e) need to be removed before feeding it.  Feed store hay is generally fresher/higher quality than the pet store junk anyway, plus it’s a fraction of the price – in fact, you can save around $3000 in a bunny’s lifetime (assuming a 10-year lifespan) by getting hay by the bale from feed stores instead of at pet stores!

            ~ Papaya and pineapple enzymes:

            The jury’s still out on whether the enzymes in papaya and pineapple are actually helpful with hairballs.  Some people recommend pineapple juice (has to be fresh, as the canning process denatures the enzymes); however, I feel the ratio of sugar to enzymes is so low that by the time the bunny gets enough enzymes to potentially be helpful, they’ve ingested enough sugar to cause other problems.  *If* you wish to try the enzyme thing, I strongly suggest using Oxbow Papaya tablets – they have extra, concentrated enzymes added AND no extra sugars, so the enzyme to sugar ratio is really good.  Whether they help is debatable, but at least the negligible amount of sugar is unlikely to be problematic.

             

            When to worry:

            If a rabbit goes 8-12+ hours without eating and/or pooping, it’s considered a medical emergency.  Their digestive tracts are designed to always be moving – if they stop eating for too long, the digestive tract comes to a stop.  This is referred to as GI stasis, which is deadly if untreated.  GI stasis is a symptom, not a diagnosis – there’s always an underlying cause for why the rabbit has stopped eating.  Sometimes at-home remedies can be used if the problem is detected quickly enough and a vet trip can be avoided, but this depends on what the underlying cause is (or is suspected to be).  Unfortunately, if a bunny isn’t pooping at all and a blockage is suspected (such as a hairball or foreign object), you should never force-feed them as adding more food can actually make the problem significantly worse.

             

            If it has been 8-12+ hours since the bunny has eaten and/or pooped (or if you’re not sure but can’t rule out that it’s been that long) and/or if you think there might be a total blockage, an *immediate* (as in stop what you’re doing and go now) vet trip is in order.  The vet, assuming they’re rabbit-savvy, will always prescribe take-home medications for pain and GI motility (metacam and metoclopramide (aka Reglan) in the US) AND strive to diagnose the underlying cause, which must then be treated.  [Red flags that you should find a new vet: they don’t give anything for pain (pain meds are crucial for treating stasis), they prescribe a broad-spectrum antibiotic without having diagnosed an official cause (antibiotics may be warranted if an abscess is detected, for example), they administer or prescribe a steroid (steroids should be a LAST resort with bunnies, not the first… yet I’ve heard of more than one vet giving them for stasis and steroids can’t be combined with NSAIDS like metacam) or if they treat the stasis but don’t do anything to determine the cause.]


          • JackRabbit
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              Imbrium — I love the idea of the water fountain with filter thing (my sister has one for her cat) but haven’t bought one because I just assumed my bunnies would just step in it.  Do your bunnies step in it, put things in it, or um poop in it? 

              Also, on the papaya enzyme thing . . . One vet told me to give it and another one said it was a waste of time so I started reading everything I could find about it.  I can’t remember where I read it, but I read somewhere that the enzyme didn’t necessarily break down the ingested fur but that it did increase the mucus production which helped the fur pass more quickly when it was ingested (hence not hanging around in the stomach and forming furballs) .  Made sense to me so I give my bunnies papaya enzyme daily (Oxbow).


            • Imbrium
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                Posted By JackRabbit on 3/16/2014 4:02 AM

                Imbrium — I love the idea of the water fountain with filter thing (my sister has one for her cat) but haven’t bought one because I just assumed my bunnies would just step in it.  Do your bunnies step in it, put things in it, or um poop in it? 

                Also, on the papaya enzyme thing . . . One vet told me to give it and another one said it was a waste of time so I started reading everything I could find about it.  I can’t remember where I read it, but I read somewhere that the enzyme didn’t necessarily break down the ingested fur but that it did increase the mucus production which helped the fur pass more quickly when it was ingested (hence not hanging around in the stomach and forming furballs) .  Made sense to me so I give my bunnies papaya enzyme daily (Oxbow).

                Yeah, that sounds like about what I concluded re: the papaya/pineapple enzymes… hence why I don’t recommend against them, per se – I only caution people to consider the trade-off in terms of sugar (and for that reason, recommend the Oxbow tabs).

                 

                As for the fountain, I bought this one – it arrives tomorrow.  I asked on Amazon and was told that it *does* filter out debris, not just impurities (which isn’t true of all pet fountains).  The debris (hay and occasionally poop) has become a big issue now that I’ve got three bunnies living together, so I’m hoping it does a good job of getting the hay out of the water.  I’ll try to remember to let you know how it’s working later this week, but if I forget, feel free to PM me to remind me (I can be pretty scatter-brained!) .

                 

                 

                 

                 

                 

                 

                 

                 

                 

                 

                 

                 

                 

                 

                 

                 

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            Forum HOUSE RABBIT Q & A Found a ball of fur in rabbits poop