Critical care
- Thread starter Ellie-May
- Start date
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DMS260820
I have and do. It is a wise decision to make, but pellets are fine if you can't afford critical care right now.
Critical care is a finely ground hay, its basicly dust and mixes like porridge with warm water or cold. It's got all the vitamins and fiber to help boost a sick guinea pigs health back up. I may have misses some ingredients, could be more than hay but it's very good stuff
If needed in an emergency, then you can mush up their normal pellets with boiled water, and then let it cool to feed to them. It is good to keep syringes in stock in case they are needed but keeping critical care wouldn’t be worth it as it has a use by date.
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DMS260820
Yea syringes are probably more important actually, you have a good point about use by dates
. I just give it away to someone in need before it goes out of date.
Lady Kelly
Senior Guinea Pig
I don't buy it in unless I need it. I mostly go for mushed up pellets anyway as it's the food/flavour that the piggies are used to so I always hope it will encourage them to eat more if they are needing syringe feeding. If you are wanting it to be easier to mix you can get a cheap coffee grinder (think my old one was around £10 from Argos) which will blitz up the pellets in seconds. Unfortunately my husband decided to try tapioca in it and it broke 
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DMS260820
I have wondered something about feeding mushed nuggets as a recovery food I know it works, and rescues do it, so it can't be bad. But it's going against the rule of one tablespoon per pig per day on nuggets. Is it the least of your worries with a sick guinea pig? Or is critical care the same and Contians alot of calcium like some nuggets do? I feel like I'm getting more goodness in with cc rather than nuggets, but it's the price of cc which is high, maybe because I use oxbow and buy it from the vet practice
Lady Kelly
Senior Guinea Pig
If you have a pig who is not eating enough on their own then trying to control the amount of what they eat goes out in the window in favour of keeping them alive by making sure something goes in. You can't syringe feed hay so something has to go in and I sometimes add herbs to try and get them to willingly eat more.
As ladykelly says - if you’ve got a pig who isn’t eating (or not eating enough), then sticking to recommended feeding amounts really is not a concern. You’re keeping piggy alive by syringe feeding and at that point, nothing else really matters
piggieminder
Forum Buddy
Mine love the Science Recovery food, I find they will take it when they won't accept mushed nuggets. I usually keep a few sachets in just in case. You can buy a box of 10 on line for what my vets charge for 1! Once my piggies are starting to recover but still need syringing I start gradually going over to mushed nuggets. I've got two piggies I'm syringing at the moment and have just started trying Burgess Dual Care nuggets, much cheaper than powder, mushes easier than normal pellets but has the added extras of recovery food. Both piggies are accepting this well, you can feed these whole or mushed so if there's any left at the end of the need for syringing I shall mix them with normal nuggets and use them up to save any wastage.
Ellie-May
Teenage Guinea Pig
That is what I was thinking. Unfortunately, you never knew when things will happen, but I don't want to waste money on something that I may not be able to use if it were to happen
Ellie-May
Teenage Guinea Pig
Yea syringes are probably more important actually, you have a good point about use by dates
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I only have a blender lolI don't buy it in unless I need it. I mostly go for mushed up pellets anyway as it's the food/flavour that the piggies are used to so I always hope it will encourage them to eat more if they are needing syringe feeding. If you are wanting it to be easier to mix you can get a cheap coffee grinder (think my old one was around £10 from Argos) which will blitz up the pellets in seconds. Unfortunately my husband decided to try tapioca in it and it broke
Ritika
Adult Guinea Pig
I have learned that you can make your own critical care from saskia from la guinea pig rescue. She said that u can grind some hay and pellets into a paste like consistency which btw is just not only pellets as she said and in another bowl u can grind some veggies like carrots and any fruit which your piggy likes and then u can fill up 80% of the syringe with hay and pellets mixture and then in the end 20-10% u can stuff the veggie mixture in the syringe so when your guinea pig tastes it he tastes the good fruit and veggies and he ll eagerly eat it
u can keep the proportions of everything as much as u like hope it helps
u can keep the proportions of everything as much as u like hope it helps
I have learned that you can make your own critical care from saskia from la guinea pig rescue. She said that u can grind some hay and pellets into a paste like consistency which btw is just not only pellets as she said and in another bowl u can grind some veggies like carrots and any fruit which your piggy likes and then u can fill up 80% of the syringe with hay and pellets mixture and then in the end 20-10% u can stuff the veggie mixture in the syringe so when your guinea pig tastes it he tastes the good fruit and veggies and he ll eagerly eat it
In the event of an emergency then in the short term any nutrition you can get into a piggy to keep its guts moving is better than none. Long term you need a bit of a better solution.
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DMS260820
Well I was syringe feeding an old pig of mine for a month straight, I was swapping between the 2. Pellet mash and cc. Towards the end the cc was literally going in one end and coming out that other. Kim had a look and said it wasn't even poo it was pure cc. Probably was to do with his organs failing. I don't know