risk for megacolon?

[SnowyShiloh]

This may be an ignorant question but I figured breeders would know! Is my bunny at risk for megacolon? He's a mini rex, mostly white with some brown spots on his back. His ears are white and his eyes are blue-gray. I know that with some animals, lots of white and blue eyes / odd markings can mean bad things and for some reason megacolon jumps out at me with this combo for bunnies. I've never seen another bunny with spots on its rump but white ears and blue-gray eyes. Here's a picture of him:

We've had him for almost 3 weeks now and he's had a couple little bitty digestive upsets but nothing major. He is almost 9 weeks old.

Please forgive me if this question is moronic!

 

[naturestee]

Generally, with megacolon you are looking at rabbits that have a specific color gene resulting in very small or nearly absent color spots on a white rabbit. Hotots, dwarf hotots, and mismarks of breeds like English spot that hardly have any color are traditionally the ones that are likely to have megacolon. That is because it related to having two of a specific color gene. Unfortunately my favorite link from the library doesn't exist anymore, but here's an abstract of a similar paper:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8822192?dopt=Abstract

I don't know exactly how to tell if a rabbit is En En (and having a chance for megacolon) vs. En en, the gene combo that many spotted rabbits have. To me, it looks like your bun has more color than I would expect from a bun with megacolon.

FYI, the blue eyes are likely from the Vienna gene, which also causes white marks. En En and En en genes do not make blue eye color.

 

[SnowyShiloh]

Naturestee, thanks for the info! I knew there was something about unusual whiteness and megacolon, couldn't remember if eye color had anything to do with it. Maximus's sister is a broken black with brown eyes and two of his brothers look just like him with the brown spots and blue eyes but they both had more brown on them, including on the ears. I know there was at least one more sibling that was brown but don't know the eye color or sex. I wonder if the coloring of him and his siblings are linked to sex? Of the 4 babies we saw, all the boys were broken brown with blue eyes and the one girl was broken black with brown eyes. Just kind of interesting.

In any case, hopefully Max will be fine!!

 

[SnowyShiloh]

Naturestee, do you know at what age megacolon usually presents itself? I can't find it online.

 

[naturestee]

I haven't got a clue. Because it is thought to be a problem with nerve distribution in the intestines, I would think it would show fairly early but I just don't know. My dwarf hotot girls were about 1.5 years old when I adopted them and were very sick from a diet that is inappropriate for most healthy rabbits.

 

[4kr]

I have had a rabbit with megacolon and the large, soft poop was present at weaning and from then on until he was an adult...

 

[naturestee]

Thanks! It looks like you breed dwarf hotots, which certainly makes sense. I miss my little hotot girls!

 

[mistyjr]

I dont know what megacolon is.. Hmmm!

But hes a beautiful broken vm mini rex. Very pretty!

 

[4kr]

Thanks! Oh I love my hotots, very special to me. Yes, the buck I had with megacolon had bouts of diarrhea, very Large and soft stools. Nothing helped, extra hay didn't work, you name it we tried everything. I believe it's genetic since its a congenital disorder (lack of nerves in colon to cause normal peristalsis). He didn't stay in my barn long after the diagnosis. Hopefully yours will be fine, if he has normal, hard poops then there isn't any reason to worry about megacolon.

 

[gmas rabbit]

I am curious why rabbit owners with bunnies suffering from melacolon are not giving their rabbits a babies or children's formula of Lactobacillus and Bifdobacterium. My husband has ulcerative colitus and takes a strain of the above that contains 13 different probiotics. When he has a flare up he takes up to 6-8 pills of it a day. The probiotics attack the bad bacteria in the gut and replace it with good, that improves the lining of the gut, normalizes gut mobility, helps to digest food, reduces the imflamation and generally just improves his life. Would this not help bunnies with the above condition??

 

[4kr]

No, because megacolon is a condition where the rabbit is born without nerves in a certain section of the colon(usually near the end of the colon to the anus). So it has nothing to do with bacteria in the gut. The normal motility of the colon is interrupted and therefore the bunny can't poop normally(they do poop but it is usually really soft) and they tend to loose more fluids easily because they cannot retain the feces to absorb water like a normal rabbit would. I wish there were a cure, but as far as I am aware, there is nothing that can be done.

 

[naturestee]

4kr is right. Probiotics were helpful to my dwarf hotots who had megacolon when they would have bad episodes, but megacolon itself does not have anything to do with the bacterial population in the intestines. If it had a treatment, my girls might still be with me today. One technically died of old age issues but I'm sure that megacolon and her first 1.5 years of a neglectful, abusive home took a large toll on her, as she was only 7.

4kr, I have a suspicion that it affects more of the intestines than that, as one of my girls died of bloat which was likely a malfunction of the pyloric sphincter (controls stuff going from the stomach to the small intestine). Either that or 100% of her intestinal tract shut down in the matter of a few hours. There really isn't much research, although there would be if we were talking about dogs. Grr.

 

[SnowyShiloh]

Lots of great info about megacolon in here, thanks so much! I'm glad to know that my little man should be just fine He is such a joy.