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Advice please

R

Ridingscarlet

Junior Guinea Pig
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Hello
I have rescued an elderly lady pig (6) from a local rescue. Had her a couple of weeks now and she’s started sounding a bit chesty and snuffly. Took her to the vet Monday and she’s been on antibiotics for 5 days with little improvement. She’s eating well. Vet said to update him yesterday, which I have and he said to try her in a plastic box with a nebuliser attached. I’ve ordered a nebuliser (coming tomorrow), my son seems to think the noise is more apparent when she’s eating. It’s a weird noise like a grunt/wheeze. It was an exotic vet who saw her who is competent with pigs. Any ideas what this could be?, could it be a virus?, the vet mentioned something like horses get (strangles) when they are stressed (with her moving to us). She gets on with the neutered boar and it’s just the 2 of them. Not sure what to do with her.
 
Ridingscarlet said:
Hello
I have rescued an elderly lady pig (6) from a local rescue. Had her a couple of weeks now and she’s started sounding a bit chesty and snuffly. Took her to the vet Monday and she’s been on antibiotics for 5 days with little improvement. She’s eating well. Vet said to update him yesterday, which I have and he said to try her in a plastic box with a nebuliser attached. I’ve ordered a nebuliser (coming tomorrow), my son seems to think the noise is more apparent when she’s eating. It’s a weird noise like a grunt/wheeze. It was an exotic vet who saw her who is competent with pigs. Any ideas what this could be?, could it be a virus?, the vet mentioned something like horses get (strangles) when they are stressed (with her moving to us). She gets on with the neutered boar and it’s just the 2 of them. Not sure what to do with her.
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Hi and welcome

It is very difficult to work out what is going on when it is not clearly a bacterial infection. Guinea pigs generally don't have viral respiratory illnesses but by day 5, the antibiotic has generally built up to full strength.

It the noise coming from the nose or the throat? It is clearly not in the lungs, as your vet would have reacted differently. You can get a bit of an idea yourself if you hold your ear against the nose and then against the throat. It is not perfect in terms of stethoscopic quality but this little home trick can give you an idea where the problem mainly sits.

It could be a resistancy or it is something else entirely.

A latent reservoir, damage from a bad or untreated respiratory infection earlier in life more commonly tend to react to ABs to some degree but it could also be a reaction to a new variety of hay, the humidity in a room, narrowed or slacker airways not unusual in oldies or something else...

I would try and see whether nebulisation does help or not. In the meantime, you can place a bowl of steaming water next to the cage or on a stable hut in the cage and see whether that makes a difference or not. Once you get past antibiotics and there is nothing else that stands out, you are usually down to trial and error. Seeing whether nebulisation makes a difference
is the logical next step.

My Ffraid, who came here aged four had off and on respiratory episodes but she wouldn't react to baytril until about two weeks into the course (it was about 15 years back) but as she always did hold her breath in at the vets, it was usually an exercise in frustration to even get her diagnosed. In her case, I was dealing with a reservoir even though her previous owner had had her treated for URI when she was young but it had obviously not cleared it out. It took two years of frustration, a specialist and a very good stethoscope plus a longer course of antibiotics to clear her out - that was in the days before nebulisation had come on the block but also before resistancy had become an increasing problem.


You will find that any obstruction to the very narrow and small airways in guinea pigs is always much more audible when they are eating as the airway and the esophagus cross and breathing is cut off while your piggy swallows.
 
Yes, Polo has been on about three courses of Doxycycline with relapses in between and complete absence of respiratory noises while on the abx. It can take quite a while to get on top of breathing issues I believe ❤️
 
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