Danielledoo
Junior Guinea Pig
- Joined
- Jun 14, 2016
- Messages
- 11
- Reaction score
- 31
- Points
- 185
Hi, I haven't posted here before but am a regular lurker. I have two long haired pigs, Snowy and Smudge (both 2 years of age). Snowy has been poorly recently and the problem began over a week ago now. I suspected that Snowy had lost some weight and so I weighed both pigs - Smudge came in at a healthy 1100grams where as Snowy was just 960g. I kept a close eye on him, he was eating and drinking fine and nothing else seemed a miss. Then on Sunday morning (24th Sept) my partner noticed Snowy wasn't bothered when we gave them their spinach which isn't like him. I weighed him and he was now 860g. All that day he sat in his house, barely ate and barely drank but he was eating and drinking some. I took him to the vets the next day, she agreed his weight was low but said his tummy felt nice and soft and although his poo's were small they were a good solid shape. She said his guts sounded a little slow. We went away with some anti bionics (Baytril) and some 'Emeprid' to assist his gut motility. There seemed to be an immediate improvement, he was eating, drinking and back to his cheeky self of standing on his back legs asking for food. His weight did drop a little bit more but then stabilised around 810g and I hoped this would be the start of an upward curve. Yesterday he stopped his anti biotics and other medicine. This morning, I've woken up to give them veg before I went to work and again, he wanted nothing to do with it - not even a bite this time which he normally would. I weighed him and upsettingly he now weighs 760g. I've returned from work this afternoon to find him in his house still and so I began to feed him a recovery mix provided by the vets. He seemed keen to take the syringe food and kept biting for more. He's had a tiny bit of hay in his cage and returned to his house again. I have resumed his medicine this morning as we have some left and hopefully he will improve. Given his rapid weight loss I'm struggling to see a happy ending right now. I'm going to continue with some syringe food every few hours tonight and see how we are tomorrow (appetite, drinking and poo etc) pending another return to the vets tomorrow. I realise his teeth could be an issue but based on what I can inspect his teeth are fine, he was eating carrots and treats last week that were solid. His chin isn't wet underneath and the vet didn't identify any immediate issue despite him wriggling during the inspection!
Sorry for the hugely long message. I just want to make sure we've assessed all options for him. One final note, before starting his medicine last week his stools seemed loose on the sunday and smelly. However he's been going to the toilet fine all week, I have noticed today however we have returned to loose stools that seem to have trouble coming out!
Sorry for the hugely long message. I just want to make sure we've assessed all options for him. One final note, before starting his medicine last week his stools seemed loose on the sunday and smelly. However he's been going to the toilet fine all week, I have noticed today however we have returned to loose stools that seem to have trouble coming out!
