Liver Post Cocci (Pics)

[Olimpia]

Hi all, it's been a while.
Last night I sadly had to cull one of my lovely hares. She had no easy life and it just kept getting worse to the point where I couldn't afford to care for her.
Short summary of her life: at around 5 months she developed a serious cocci infection, very emaciated, her rear legs were paralyzed for a few days even. I treated with sulfaquinoxaline, a drug that is known to be rough on the liver. 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off, 2 weeks on again.
She got better and was happy for a while! But as she reached senior weight (those hare does really become chunkers at around a year), she developed some leg issues and had chronic pain. Her front legs were very weak and she walked on her wrists, and her rear was hunched and she had calluses in the middle of her hind legs (very odd spot). This much I was okay with dealing with, but she went off her food, one of her cheeks swelled up immensely. Likely some type of malocclusion from grinding from the pain, now that's at least $500 to fix. O_O So at this point I decided it was time to part, she was only a year and a half..

Anyways I was curious about her liver so here it is. You can see little scars from cocci pustules, which I thought was neat. But I've never seen a liver so fragmented. I was wondering, do you think it was the drug or the illness that did this to her liver?

:bunnyhop:

 

[LittleFluffyBunnies]

As for the liver, I honestly don't know as I've never opened up a rabbit before.

But, I wanted to say I am sorry for your loss. It's always hard to lose bunnies, especially young ones.

 

[MaggieJ]

I've seen livers with cocci nodules, but never seen one that looks like that--fragmented is a good description. I'd speculate that it was the medication that caused it.

I know euthanizing a rabbit is never easy, but from your description of her symptoms, I think it was the kindest thing you could do.

 

[Dood]

Neat and thanks for sharing

I cannot comment on whether it was the drug or not as I dont treat my rabbits with meds. I've seen a lot of healthy and diseased rabbit livers but nothing like this :shock:

I have been present for several dog and cat necropsies and have seen scarred livers similar to this that the vets attributed to the drugs they were on to give them a few more years with their owners so I think it was likely the medicine as well

 

[Zass]

I posted my hepatic cocci livers to show you what that looks like too. This was from heavily infected kits that were kept on soil.

I have seen occasional spots on my caged fryer's livers (1000 times better looking then the ones pictured), and, I have noticed after 12-14 weeks, any kind of liver spot or scarring is rare to see.

My guess was that they were healing those with time.

Is it possible that the medication prevented it from healing as well in your doe? Or perhaps, my guess was off...

 

[Olimpia]

Oh boy... get ready for this one... if yours were heavily infected I can't imagine what this would qualify as...
This is the liver of her brother who I culled because he stopped eating, if you would like to take a guess at the severity of the infection I pulled her out of...
in regards to the light spots, I don't think there was any infection in those, they were just scar tissue from where some spots might have been, is what I thought..
(this is the only cocci I ever dealt with I've been getting clean livers on my meaty rabbits and my 2nd Belgian litter was fine)...

 

[Dood]

Holy crow!!!!!

I cannot believe that rabbit was still walking :shock: just goes to show how well rabbits can hide illness

 

[Zass]

Poor thing. It's good you culled him when you did.

 

[Olimpia]

I have one doe (their sister) left that I treated with this medication. She did not have the symptoms that these two did, she had some diarrhea. I for the life of me can't remember if I only did one round of the drug on her or not. But I'm worried that her liver might look sort of like the first one. I really hope it won't affect her life span being like this; she seems great right now so I hope she doesn't have immune problems or something from it...

I feel bad because in the past I had offered up that first rabbit to pet homes. I'm really glad she ended up staying here though. :x

I also feel bad having given people help with cocci in the past now. I obviously was dealing with a way more aggressive strain of the disease than most people will ever encounter. They would lose weight dramatically over a few days. People always told me cocci doesn't cause paralysis as well which I thought was silly because I obviously had dealt with paralysis. I could smell the cocci on these rabbits very strongly while they were still alive. And when I opened that guy up the smell was so strong I couldn't understand how people say you can still eat them when they have this because I couldn't work past the stench.
I'm just glad it has been controlled, possible that this strong drug was what was needed for it...

Now I wonder, if we should perhaps avoid using sulpha-drugs to treat the rabbits. It seems like Amprol might be a safer choice because it won't wreak as much havoc on their livers, though the sulpha-drugs pack a harder punch it potentially comes with long term issues.
I've become quite the sanitation freak after this incident so I really hope nothing else like this pops up.

 

[Zass]

There is more than one type of cocci, caused by different species of protozoa.
I think most only deal with an intestinal form of the disease.
(I have noticed, people sometimes become confused when there are plenty of cocci symptoms, but there is no apparent liver damage.)
The hepatic cocci you are seeing seems to be the very worst variety.

 

[EnglishSpot]

this was a very informative post. i'm sorry you and your hares went through this, but was an incredible learning experience, thank you!!!

 

[Olimpia]

Yes, I figured it would be of interest. I never really thought that much of that little guy's liver until now. Even though I had seen pics of cocci livers, dunno, never thought to even bring it up. In hindsight I wish I had kept it and sent it off to a lab, but it's much too late now.
I found a stud to breed 2 does to within the next month so hopefully I can get back on track with this breed.