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Cause Of Sudden Death In A Youngish Pig?

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Freela

Freela

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This is for a friend, thankfully my girls are doing fine! A friend just lost her 3-ish year old boar today. She just went to clean the cage and found that he had died in his sleep. He hadn't shown any signs of being ill. No respiratory symptoms, no weight loss, no behavior change. The only thing that was 'new' was that he had a bad scratch on his eye last week and was on an antibiotic eye drop for that. She was wondering if he could have gotten an infection due to the eye scratch that could have killed him without him showing signs of being ill. I think it was more apt to be an underlying heart problem or something like that which didn't present with any symptoms. I know she is a very hands on 'mom' to the pigs, and her kids are also good with the pets and very involved, so I'm convinced that if there were symptoms to see, someone would have noticed them. The cage-mate pig appears to be fine, not ill, but obviously subdued as he has lost his friend. They are indoor pigs, it's far too cold where we live for pigs to be outdoors at this time of year, so them temperature has been controlled and there's no chance that he ate anything strange on the lawn. Any ideas for the cause of a sudden pig death?
 
Sorry to hear that Freela, had me worried when I saw your name. I have no ideas sorry. x
 
I would think that it is more likely due to a heart attack or a stroke. Either can strike out of the blue at any age at seemingly perfectly healthy piggies. But they both leave the poor owners soul searching and struggling to make sense. That is a normal reaction, as are any feelings of guilt or shortcoming at somehow having overlooked any subtle signs of illness in a situation like that.
 
I had the same, Rebel was 3 in August, the day before he died, he had been chasing the neighbour's cat round the garden (Rebel by name, rebel by nature) No sign of illness until I found him fitting, rushed him straight to the vet where he was PTS. :(
 
I don't know but my Moche (the brown pig on the left in my avatar picture) "just died", I just found her one morning lying "asleep" next to Aztec and then realised she was actually dead. I was so very upset as I loved her very much, she was a large, healthy guinea pig who was running round my living room the night before. There were no signs of illness that I could pick up. She was kept inside and so I could rule out a heart attack due to being scared by a predator or something. She was about 2 1/2.
 
Same happened with my Abigail, went in to give them some veggies she was out and alert. Ran into the hay bag, reverse out and shot into the bedroom area. She didn't move from that spot and started making a popping sound. Took her out and tried to get hold of a vet she tried her best to get away from us but ended up having a fit and dying either at home or the way to the vet. We still have no idea what happened and she was fine the night before... The vet had no idea, granted they were pretty useless there and my usual vet had closed and the out of hours weren't answering the phone. Abigail wasn't even a year old

And 3 weeks later we lost Maggie she had something called gastric dilation and made the decision to have her PTS... never seen Rory look so depressed broke my heart.

PS - my iPad is seconds away from going through the window! grr :cen:
:cen::cen:
 
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