mucoid enteropathy - help! Sorry long.

I have a doe with this condition. I have tried and tried to sort her out but she still hardly eats and hardly poos and hardly drinks. That said she has her head in the feed bowl and is munching some guinea food as I am typing this :roll: I have tried a variety of rabbit food. She won't touch my A&P pellets. She ate SS for a few days and now won't touch that either. She ate Wagg food for a few days too. The vet said she would rather she ate guinea food than vegetables so that is what she is getting. She is eating a little hay too, and the occasional blade of grass. She would eat loads of vegis if I let her, but that is contributing to her digestive problems and so I am not supposed to give them to her, she gets really mucky when she gets them. When I took her to the vet she said she felt almost completely empty except that she was sloshing from the fluids I had been giving her.

Most of the poo she does produce is covered in mucous, and she has had a very sore bottom from the mess but I have managed to get that to heal and she is no longer sore down there. I think she is eating most of the poo she produces even though it is not proper caecotrophs. She has had a course of baytril in case a urinary infection was causing trouble too. She also has bad teeth, but an anesthetic to sort that out would be dangerous at this point. The vet doesn't think they have caused this. I think that it has been caused by the diet she was fed before she came to me. Her offspring also have some digestive oddities - her daughter had bloat and then shifted her blockage and pooed and pooed and pooed and looked so happy to shift it all. Her son is here in the crate below her also having to have avipro for abnormally large irregular poos. That seems to be doing the job for him fortunatly.

She is having metacloprimide twice daily, and avipro in her water. I had been giving her infacol but stopped as it didn't seem to help, although she has produced lots of wind at various times. I gave her lots of pineapple juice in the hopes of unblocking her but all that happened is that she started that sloshing business.

The funny thing is that all through this she has been lively and active. She doesn't seem to be in pain, but is definitely far from alright. She hates being syringe fed, and bites through a syringe in no time flat. Tummy massages seem to be one of the more effective things that helps her.

The vet said that cisapride would be the best drug to help her, but that is not available anymore.

Does anyone have any other ideas?

Did your vet do a fecal test? He would be able to determine if there is a bacterial or parasitic problem and prescribe the correct medication. Has she had an xray, and did it show any problems such as cecal impaction?

What breed and color is she? I know english spots and hotots of both sizes are known to have digestive issues, and my dwarf hotots are no exception. I just went through something similar with Sprite. I've also heard that in some broken colors, nerve distribution along the GI tract is patchy like the color and can lead to problems.

Just wondering, but did your vet call it mucoid enteropathy? As I understood it, that was primarily a disease of baby rabbits and that different forms/causes of diarrhea can cause mucous covered fecals.

Don't know if you've seen these sites, but you might find more help here:
http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/GI_diseases/GI_diseases_main.htm
http://homepage.mac.com/mattocks/morfz/rabrefs.html#gi

Am I right in thinking that Cisapride is the same as Propulsid? I'm sure I read that it was still available in tablet form, and people were making a solution with the crushed tablets to syringe feed? Might be wrong though, and it's also quite a while since I read it, so the tablets may no longer be available.

If bacterial/parasitic involvement has been excluded along with any other systemic disease (has a full blood profile been done?) I'd say this sounds a bit like an Inflammatory Bowel Condition to me :?
As her offspring appear to be effected it might be a congenital condition where the innervation of the large bowel (colon) has gone 'wonky' -basically the large bowel is not connected up to the nervous system correctly so malfunctions. Inflammatory bowel disease responds to steroid injections or a drug used for humans with Ulcerative Colitis-SALAZOPYRIN

Re the Cisapride (Prepulsid) it was withdrawn for human use which is why it is near on impossible to obtain for Veterinary use. Although the Vet Meds Licensing bods are working on getting it licensed for Veterinary use again.
Giving it orally (if you can obtain it) may be futile if the bun is already in stasis. It really needs to be given by sub-cutaneous injection.

Janex

Last time when my vet prescribe metacloprimide, it's every 8 hr. rather than yours twice a day.

What happened to your rabbit is almost identical to my last rabbit (he passed away last year due to liver cancer). I also agree w/ your vet that the cause is your bunny's diet. My bunny doesn't really have mucoid enteropathy, but he has an ongoing diet problem w/ very similar symptoms of yours. And has to go on meta from time to time.

The key element is the missing fiber from hay. My last rabbit, loves green just like yours, and totally refuse hay.

For a short while, Oxbow Basic T is the solution, as this pellet is high in fiber. My rabbit ate for a while, then give up, then go back in. In the end, I mix Basic T all the time w/ the regular pellet, hoping he picked up some during the day.

Another solution I try is to strip seedhead seed off and rub it on fruit, and hoping that as my rabbit ate the fruit, the seedhead goes in his system. I also try to puncture a slice of apple w/ very small bits of hay stem, I inserted it say 2 mm, then cut it w/ a scissor, then puncture the next spot on the apple slice, and repeat the above. Both of these two ways yields very lmiited success.

However, what doesn't work on my rabbit, doesn't mean it wouldn't work on yours. The key is the personality of the rabbit. That's the real cause of not eating fiber.

If you are syringe feed the rabbit -- I very highly recommend you in the content of the syringe, whether it is baby food (w/ no meat content of course) or milupa, or whatever, that in that mix, you strip the seed off the seed head from the timonthy hay, and mixed the tiny seed w/ the syringe food. That way, it's digestable as it is so small, and it is true fiber.

If you can feed syringe 6 meals x 5 cc per day mixed w/ the above seed head (just rub it off w/ your finger), guarantee your rabbit diet back to normal in 3 weeks.

Oh...in case your bunny is chewing carpet, don't let her do it, I made that mistake. Nowadays, all portable carpet w/ threads, I throw them away, I replaced them w/ a big 100% cotton towels (cotton is nature material). Because the thread afffect her digestive system too.

Louise, the nearest thing I have experienced to this is clostridial enterotoxaemia in Merlin about 18 months ago but that was life-threatening. :roll: He's fine now. Do you think there might be any benefit in your vet contacting the Rabbit Clinic at Bristol Uni? I know that Jason has consulted them in the past.

The number is....oooh now where is that number??? Aha, pinned to the wall......

Tel: 0117 928 9420 Fax: 0117 928 9628

Might be worth a shot, nothing to lose! :wink:

It is very interesting that Hotots and English rabbits are prone to this- she looks just like naturestee's avatar! It does seem to be an auto-immune thing, very similiar to grass sickness in horses :? And it does seem likely to be a genetic thing given her offspring have trouble too. It is mucoid enteropathy, a chronic form that affects adults rather than the acute form that baby rabbits get.

She is having the metacloprimide in tablet form which I am crushing and diluting. I would love to get hold of some propulsid. Is it only this country that is it is not available anymore? What about the US? My Dad lives there...

She is actually eating hay at the moment, so for now the meds is working. She just doesn't eat much - down to the lack of nerves in gut I imagine :? I don't think getting lots of tests will help, the vet didn't think so either, she is confident that I was right about what it is. The thing is to find ways to help her without using my entire vet budget to do it :? She drank quite a lot last night too, which is a good sign. And she was jumping up begging for food when I came down this morning having picked out all the bits she wanted from the guinea food :roll: Since she appears to be hungry today I will just give her SS and see if she eats some. -She gave me a disgusted look when I gave her that :roll: So I gave in and gave her guinea food which she tucked straight into :roll: Oh rats she stopped already She is driving me mad :?

Thanks everyone for your input
I'll ask the vet about the steroids or SALAZOPYRIN when I take her back next week.
She is almost impossible to syringe feed (the first rabbit I have come accross where it really becomes force feeding ) so as long as she is eating and drinking something I don't want to stress her by doing it.

Ooh good, she is back at the feed bowl (Sorry for the running commentary)

I'll see about increasing the frequency of the metacloprimide - although FHB says twice a day, and the tabs split to two doses better than one :?

Here is madam Snowbelle when she first came in:
She has lost lots of weight now and is no longer so mucky.

Hi Louise

It may be worth PM'ing Lynn as she had Robbie with that - tests done in Edinburgh University Hospital may give some clues?

This is getting very worrying as English do seem to be prone to this :? I know that somewhere they are doing studies into it but Lynn may have more info and she will know the person/people involved

Hope the buns get fixed up and something can be done to help them - sending loads of healing vibes from EE

I believe the person doing the study on dysautomia in rabbits (and horses) is Katherine Whitwell at Edinburgh.

Janex

Thanks Jay and Jane

I have searched more and learned more. Still don't know what else to do, but it was interesting :?

i dont have any advice to offer at all except for that my vets have given me prepulsid twice for linden, if it truly is what your bun needs, pehaps you vet can give them a call and find out who they order it from? linden had his in liquid form. if you think it is worth a try i will ask my vets if they would mind talking to your vets.

I have had prelusid from my vets at Easter time for on of my buns that was tablet form.

Doorkeeper, you said you had her on Baytril before? Did she get the mucous-covered poops around that time, or was it already ongoing? My avatar bun Fey got loose stools with mucous from a week-long course of Baytril. She also can't tolerate meloxicam at all- she'd stop eating and act like she was in more pain for 12 hours after each dose. It might be something to watch out for.

And my recent problems with her sister Sprite (and to some extent with Fey) came about because they both decided they didn't like the latest box of Oxbow timothy. :roll: Never had problems getting them to eat hay before. Fey on her own usually eats more hay than Mocha and Loki combined.

Jane, do you have any sources for the info re: Inflammatory Bowel Condition? I'd love to read more on it. My girls are usually pretty managable except for when they recently got picky about hay, but I'd like to know more for emergency purposes. Is it related to or the same as megacolon, which is what I normally see attributed to english spot/hotot colors?

I never heard of metacloprimide in tablet form. Over here, it's all liquid form. The content should be

3 cc x 8 hr.

metacloprimide 5 mg/5 ml