Hi there.
I'm new to forum life and can't seem to keep the posts short - I'm so sorry if this is boring!
Anyway, I live in an area with lots of calcium in the tap water (which is drinkable all over the UK) - we know because we get a big build-up of 'limescale' in the kettle and the shower never looks clean!
I've taken the following information from a local water company website... hope it is useful. Sometimes EU defines the boundaries of hard/soft water in slightly different numbers but they are roughly the same. Your bottled water looks like low calcium anyway!
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'Hard' water is water with a lot of calcium in it – the more it contains, the harder the water is.
This doesn't affect drinking water quality.
When rain falls it contains no calcium, but as it flows over the land and filters through rocks, it dissolves minerals and becomes harder.
How hard water is depends on local geology – water hardness varies widely throughout the UK.
Most of the water we supply is hard, as it comes from underground chalk aquifers with high levels of calcium.
We don't soften water before it reaches your taps – there's no UK or European standard for the hardness of drinking water.
soft water contains less than 100mg of calcium carbonate per litre
moderately hard water contains between 100 and 200mg of calcium carbonate per litre
hard water contains between 200 and 300mg of calcium carbonate per litre
very hard water contains more than 300mg of calcium carbonate per litre.
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I take in other people's old single-pigs so I've seen a few stones over the years (not all with happy endings - sniff) but I'm not a vet. My vet also keeps piggies and said there is a lot of speculation about stones but recommended 3 things for sure - 1. Get them to drink more to prevent formation, 2. Some pigs (like some people) just seem to get them (perhaps genetics or perhaps they were just genetically not inclined to drink enough - she didn't know) 3. Be careful of dark green leafy things like spinach, chard etc. and actually she was a bit suspicious of celery and only gave a little every few days...
Keep an eye on the pee to see if it looks 'milky' which is usually a fine gritty calcium deposit. It can be seen easily on coloured fleece (or just newspaper) and some pigs seem to have a bit of this a lot of the time! It is 'normal' in that sense and as long as they're peeing well because they are drinking enough it should be OK. I put a water bottle with the spout pointed into a covered 'hiding' area as one of mine drank a lot at night and I think she had been too scared to come out before. And with females at least there is a chance that if they get a big stone they can pass it without an operation.
People get stones too - although they can be made of different things and our urine is typically more acidic than the herbivore guinea-pig. In people with calcium stones, studies have found clear correlation between QUANTITY of water drunk (increase water, decrease stone formation) but not so much with HARD/SOFT water. Harder water does result in more Ca in the urine but overall no more stones - and thousands of stone-formers have been studied here. You can baffle yourself all day long but the crux of the matter is that if people who lived in hard water areas got more bladder stones (of any type, not just the calcium oxalate ones) doctors everywhere would know about it.
However, people are different to guinea-pigs and one thing that is known is that if piggies get a lot of Ca sludge (thick gritty deposits) in their pee it can sit in the bladder and bung up the urethra which means (1) the bladder has trouble emptying completely and (2) the flow of pee can slow right down and BOTH of these are thought to increase the risk of stone formation (actually in people too). This might explain why some pigs seem to have gritty pee quite regularly but if they're blasting it through by drinking a lot they don't get stone problems. There is an old expression in English, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink" and unfortunately the same is true for our piggies. However, we can keep an eye out for gritty pee and if a certain food seems to trigger it in your pigs you might want to limit that more and see if it makes a difference?
So, do I use soft (bottled) water? Sometimes. Do I ever give spinach or chard? Barely - maybe a little leaf or piece if we're having it ourselves. I give a little veg/herb every day - but not the same thing day after day after day... even old faves like cucumber and bell pepper are not every day without a break. A few slices of celery a few times a week. I have the 'right' sort of pellets (I hope!) but if we get a new 'retirement' pig and they've spent 5 years eating muesli I don't force them to change - I just offer both. Has any of this made any difference... that's hard to tell: even if 2 or 3 piggies look like they're eating/drinking the same I might suddenly see gritty pee in just one of them (we hand-feed veg treats to stop them stealing from each other so it's always one each!) BUT drinking more definitely worked for my ex-stone pig (who didn't used to drink much at all until we moved the bottles).
Stones - always a gamble! All we can do is try and increase the odds in our favour. Good Luck ☺
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