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Anyone had a gpig that has never really got sick?

  • Thread starter Thread starter DMS260820
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DMS260820

Probably a strange thread but might bring some positivity too. I myself have had a guinea pig i rescued when he was 2. And until 7 he never got sick! I dont know if this is rare or not. At the age of 7 he did get arthiritis and cancer but alot of animals get problems in very old age.

He might have had an ilness before i had him who knows? But he went 5 years without seeing a vet
 
I've had guinea pigs in the past who never saw a vet and lived long healthy happy lives. In the last year I have spent over £3,000 on vets bills and had 4 sick piggies, they don't make them like they used too! Piggy Farming on a mass scale for pet shops needs to be banned, young sick piggies is just too heartbreaking.
 
My piggy’s as a child lived for 7 and 8 years respectively. The only issue we had with one of them was a broken front tooth, took him to the vet he clipped them so they were the same length and all went back to normal. -not sure if you count this as illness but it did require a vets visit.

My last two both died within 6 months of each other, they were brothers who were both really sick, one from bloat and was PTS and the sencond from dental issues which an inexperienced vet tried to treat, which was horrendous.
 
Honey never had a vet visit until last October, and since then it's fair to say I spent a life time amount 😂 I guess it's just the way it goes sometimes, same with humans I guess, some people will be in and out of hospital all the time, others go through life no problem!
 
My 6 and 8 year old never got ill. Gem had to have a grass seed removed from her nose once and Tiger got cataracts as she got older but that’s it. Marmalade didn’t get ill ill, but she did get mites a couple of times, once really badly after her sister died. Dounut was the only one to get sick- she got and died from pyometria when she was 2.
 
Over the years i've had a total of 29 piggies, id say about 10 have had to go to the vets for one thing or another, so thats not too bad going, although my current lot are still young so theres time for more to need a visit..but hopefully not. I seem to get quite lucky and have my piggies live on average 8-9 years old so for none of them to even get arthritis seems a small miracle! Even the one boy, Fudge, who lived to 11 didnt ever get sick.
 
My peru family Ffwlbri, her sister Tesni and her niece Tegan as well as sisters Heulwen and Hedydd have all made it to 7 years of age without any illness bar a tussle with carried in ringworm for a couple of them; they are all adopted.
Tesni needed an infected burst sebacious cyst right next to her genitalia operated out at age 6 - we'd been hoping that that cyst would be staying put without any intervention because of its tricky location. She still lived another year to celebrate her 7th birthday earlier in the year. The other four are still going. Tegan, the youngest of them, is turning 7 years in two week's time.

The majority of my piggies have been healthy.

Some of the knowledge we have available on here today I and others have had to figure out the hard way by learning from mistakes and failures, but that goes for all of us who are going back a long time when we (and our vets) knew a lot less.
How to do things right when they have never been done before doesn't come with a nice manual or a tidy little map with arrows. New fads need to be tested to work out whether they work or not. And a surprising number of them do come with a 'not'.
New conditions turn up - 5 years ago hardly anybody had ever heard of lymphoma, for instance. 10 years ago, it was just noticed that an increasing number of urinary tract infections were not reacting much to antibiotics anymore but IC wasn't something you'd come across much.
10 years ago, pellets had generally a lot more calcium content and used to be fed in larger quantities, so stones we overall a lot more common. Diet recommendations contained vitamin C recommendations, but calcium and a sustainable calcium balance that included pellets and water wasn't anything you'd find information about. With my first bladder stone piggy I really struggled with a total lack of useful information, for instance.

Healthy guinea pigs in good care (and that includes rescue piggies, even those from horrible backgrounds) can make it to 5-7 years without any major health problems until old age is catching up with them - unless they are unlucky to develop a major health problem, which is never predictable.

Of course we are used to seeing a much higher proportion of illness on here because the forum is a port of call for piggy owners with all kinds of health problems.
It is the same thing that when googling for online health problems you usually come across all the horror stories, but only rarely any of the vast majority of success stories. It certainly tends to throw members who are not aware that they need to correct for that bias. :(
 
G&C said:
My piggy’s as a child lived for 7 and 8 years respectively. The only issue we had with one of them was a broken front tooth, took him to the vet he clipped them so they were the same length and all went back to normal. -not sure if you count this as illness but it did require a vets visit.

My last two both died within 6 months of each other, they were brothers who were both really sick, one from bloat and was PTS and the sencond from dental issues which an inexperienced vet tried to treat, which was horrendous.
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I would class the teeth as an accident rather than an illness.
 
I really like this thread. When I got my current three after 10 year break, I was very anxious about illness as there were sooo many sick pigs in the Health & Illness section (naturally) I felt slightly paranoid and doomed to have to spend thousands on vets fees or wake up to a sick/dead pig. I knew that only people with sick pigs would be posted there and so many more people with healthy pigs wouldn’t be posting ‘got up today and pig is fine’ ‘pigs is still fine this afternoon’ etc, but it still worried me, possibly illogically!
My current three have all been to the vets, one for a hay poke (which doesn’t really count as ill) one for a cyst, which is currently not re-filling, and one for a mystery weight lost, which we never got an answer for but is stable and monitored. They are all three years old now, so I think I’m doing OK!
 
All mine are healthy although Mistletoe did go to the vet with a mild uri which cleared up with antibiotics. I have five guinea pigs from 1 to 3 years old and one whose age is unknown.

Mistletoe, all better now

2h6etz7.jpg


Tani, age unknown

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I think vets are on the whole far more knowledgeable in treating all pets than 20-30 years ago, so it looks like more pets are poorly. Our knowledge and expectations are so much higher than then. If a piggie became ill say in the 80’s there was very little knowledge and the vet and owner did what they could, but outcomes were generally poor.

When I was little in the sixties I did have a piggie that lived around 6 years and never had any illnesses
 
Out of my pigs, they either seemed to be always at the vet or never at the vet... Sundae was there constantly for ongoing bladder and dental/abscess issues, though she still lived to be almost 7 so I consider that a success story. Linney lived to be 6.5 years with only one UTI and a cyst or abscess removed from her lower back. Hadley is 4 and has been on antibiotics once for wheezing. When we adopted Leela she had gunky eyes and got eye drops for those, but she has otherwise not been sick in the 18 months that we have had her. On the whole, I think we've done okay. Teeth seem to be the sticking point here... if you have good teeth, you'll do fine. Dental problems means a lot of vet visits. I always hope I don't end up with two dental pigs at the same time because it gets expensive!
 
Although it feels like I've always got ill pigs, especially as two are currently on long term meds, actually thinking about it the majority have been totally fine.

All of my pigs have been to the vet at some point but sometimes it's just been for a wellness check when they first arrived.

So, I don't feel as rubbish an owner now that I think about it, haha!
 
One of my 1st pigs ted lived to 5 and had never been to the vets until he had laboured breathing one morning and had to be pts.Out of my current pigs, snowy, cheese, blackie and poppy have never been ill but they’re only about 2.Guiseppe has never been ill since I took him on, he’s 5.5 years and I had him when he was 3.I did take him to the vets the other week for diarrhoea although I think it was too much veg that caused that.
 
I had my Rainbow Piggies Lenny and Gizmo from about 12 weeks old till 5 (Lenny) and 5 and a half (Gizmo) in all that time they never so much as had haypoke apart from Lenny. 10 days before Lenny died he had a massive abscess under his chin and I took him to the vet who got the last of the pus out (it had burst in the hutch overnight:vom:) It came up really fast like in a day and I took him to the vet the next day and she gave me and antibiotic and an anti inflammatory (it was a long time ago so can't remember which ones now but antibiotic was probably Baytril as I remember mixing it with a bit of orange juice). Lenny took the meds for a week and passed to the Rainbow Bridge a few days later. There was no talk of flushing the abscess or anything like that. Gizmo carried on as a lone piggy for a further 6 months until he too went to join Lenny (he completely refused any other friends it was like if he couldn't have Lenny he didn't want anypig).
 
Guineapigfeet said:
I really like this thread. When I got my current three after 10 year break, I was very anxious about illness as there were sooo many sick pigs in the Health & Illness section (naturally) I felt slightly paranoid and doomed to have to spend thousands on vets fees or wake up to a sick/dead pig. I knew that only people with sick pigs would be posted there and so many more people with healthy pigs wouldn’t be posting ‘got up today and pig is fine’ ‘pigs is still fine this afternoon’ etc, but it still worried me, possibly illogically!
My current three have all been to the vets, one for a hay poke (which doesn’t really count as ill) one for a cyst, which is currently not re-filling, and one for a mystery weight lost, which we never got an answer for but is stable and monitored. They are all three years old now, so I think I’m doing OK!
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My current 19month old boar was taken to the vet in the summer for weight loss. We never did get to the bottom of it however it was advised that it was probably due to the time of year/being out in the run/coupled with a crazy baby boy chasing him and keeping him on his toes for 24 hours a day! Did yours happen over the summer too?
 
None of my five have ever been ill. Bobby has been to the vet because he squeals when his back end is touched, and I thought he may have been in pain, but it turns out he's just a sensitive wee soul - or a grumpy old sod...not sure which.
 
The brother of my old boar who never got sick got sick all the time. We spent £1000 on him w
Betsy said:
I had my Rainbow Piggies Lenny and Gizmo from about 12 weeks old till 5 (Lenny) and 5 and a half (Gizmo) in all that time they never so much as had haypoke apart from Lenny. 10 days before Lenny died he had a massive abscess under his chin and I took him to the vet who got the last of the pus out (it had burst in the hutch overnight:vom:) It came up really fast like in a day and I took him to the vet the next day and she gave me and antibiotic and an anti inflammatory (it was a long time ago so can't remember which ones now but antibiotic was probably Baytril as I remember mixing it with a bit of orange juice). Lenny took the meds for a week and passed to the Rainbow Bridge a few days later. There was no talk of flushing the abscess or anything like that. Gizmo carried on as a lone piggy for a further 6 months until he too went to join Lenny (he completely refused any other friends it was like if he couldn't have Lenny he didn't want anypig).
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Bless gizmo. Duno what happened with this post lol
 
Reenie said:
None of my five have ever been ill. Bobby has been to the vet because he squeals when his back end is touched, and I thought he may have been in pain, but it turns out he's just a sensitive wee soul - or a grumpy old sod...not sure which.
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All of my 4 pigs hate the back end being touched
 
G&C said:
My current 19month old boar was taken to the vet in the summer for weight loss. We never did get to the bottom of it however it was advised that it was probably due to the time of year/being out in the run/coupled with a crazy baby boy chasing him and keeping him on his toes for 24 hours a day! Did yours happen over the summer too?
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No, I think it was this kinda time of year
 
I used to have an old boar called pip, he got a uri every christmas apart from his last christmas he had. What a gift that was :hb:
 
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