Confused about urine test strips

[Claire5012]

As some of you may know from my last post, 1 of my piggies is currently on medication for a UTI. I was thinking it would be a good idea to get some urine test strips to determine if there is any more blood and thought it would be quite handy to have some just incase of a recurrence or any future UTIs. I had a look on amazon and now my eyes are crossed. They all have so many tests on each strip! I was wondering if any of you lovely people had any idea about which 1s I should get and answer a few questions for me please.....

1) Are these different tests all necessary for guinea pigs like they are with humans?
2) Would the results of each have to be the same for guineas and humans alike?
3) Are there any test strips that just test for blood and calcium levels maybe?
4) Apart from blood and calcium, what else would be important to know about a pigs urine?

Thanks everyone for your time

 

[DM030819]

@Claire5012

1)No. Which ones are relevant depends on what is wrong with the pig.
2). No. Pigs and humans are very different so the readings shouldn't be the same.
3) Not that I'm aware of. Even the ones my vet uses have quite a few tests on them
4)pH level. Again it depends on what it wrong with your pig. My last pig to have a urine test was tested for protein level.

 

[Claire5012]

O right never thought of ph or protein. Thank you for your reply. All I really wanted was to check for blood. I'll have a look and see if I can find any that do blood, calcium and protein levels and ph. I might want to test those at a later date if I have any problems (hopefully not). Thanks again

 

[pig in the city]

As some of you may know from my last post, 1 of my piggies is currently on medication for a UTI. I was thinking it would be a good idea to get some urine test strips to determine if there is any more blood and thought it would be quite handy to have some just incase of a recurrence or any future UTIs. I had a look on amazon and now my eyes are crossed. They all have so many tests on each strip! I was wondering if any of you lovely people had any idea about which 1s I should get and answer a few questions for me please.....

1) Are these different tests all necessary for guinea pigs like they are with humans?
2) Would the results of each have to be the same for guineas and humans alike?
3) Are there any test strips that just test for blood and calcium levels maybe?
4) Apart from blood and calcium, what else would be important to know about a pigs urine?

Thanks everyone for your time

The most important test is for blood, protein is highly variable and difficult to interpret, as is glucose, unless it's very high.
Ph is always alkaline in piggies.
As far as l know there's no test for calcium. All piggies excrete calcium in their urine, if there is an excess you can feel a grittiness in the urine.
Don't get too obsessive about testing your piggies general well being is much more reliable as an indicator of health. Piggies can have urine infections and have normal tests, or have abnormal urine tests and no infection! A good piggy vet is your best bet rather than home testing

 

[Freela]

I'm not sure if you can buy them for blood alone, but it's going to be the most useful test on the strip, as it will show blood or no blood (the tests are not sophisticated enough to differentiate between human and animal blood.) The other values may come up but the strips are calibrated for humans, which have different normal levels than guinea pigs. I would try to read too much into the test strips, though, you may drive yourself nuts trying to analyze every reading... going by symptoms is a viable way of monitoring as well.