Evolution of glycogen and blood metabolites after controlled suckling at two periods of lactation in young rabbits

Abstract

In natural conditions young rabbit nurses once a day and therefore ingests the whole of his daily caloric intake during a single meal. The present work investigates glucose homeostasis during perinatal period in young rabbit by assessing blood glucose and glycogen stores before and after one single meal. Ponderal data, glycogen and blood metabolites were determined in 1-4 day- and 17-21 day-old rabbits before suckling and at different times (1, 3, 6, 9, 24, 48, 72 h) after controlled suckling. In "young" and "old" rabbits hepatic glycogen stores were exhausted after 48 and 72 h of fast. Within the first hours following milk ingestion, muscle and carcass glycogen did not vary until 9 h in the "young" and until 24 h in the "old" without notable variation of glycemia. From 24 to 72 h young rabbits were in a fasting period with low hepatic glycogen and a decrease of muscle and carcass glycogen, but glycaemia decreased only slightly at 48 and 72 h in "young" and at 72 h in "old" As blood alanine was decreased, it appears that gluconeogenesis was effective and that alanine-glucose and Cori cycles were operating in these conditions.

Origin and utilization of volatile fatty acids and lactate in the rabbit: influence of the faecal excretion pattern

“…So, in the rabbit (Beauville et aE. 1974;McMillanet al 1975;Bonnafous & Raynaud, 1978;, as in other simple-stomach animals such as the rat (Mottaz & Worbe, 1972;RemCsy & DemignC, 1976), pig (Friend et al 1964;Imoto & Namioka, 1978), dog (Banta et al 1979) and human (Dawson et al 1964;Cummings et al 1979), the main site for VFA production and absorption is the large intestine. However, it is interesting to note that for the rabbit, the concentration of the VFA in the digesta and in the gut blood varies markedly with the excretion pattern as well as with the site from which the samples are obtained.…”