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Do we persevere, or decide it's time to let her go?

We should be syringe feeding her more often to be honest but my daughter gets really upset when we have to hold her tightly to get her to take the syringe feed and refuses to do more than a few mls at a time. Because she's so wriggly I can't do it on my own, and my husband doesn't feel comfortable handling or feeding her. I'm finding it really difficult to be honest. .
Haven't spoken to vet since I posted but was planning on phoning her tomorrow.

Please do so! We can't see your piggy and cannot comment on the medical side/prognosis of it. Any decent vet you ask for their honest opinion will usually do so and explore the various aspects with you.

Unfortunately you have to be tough in a crisis. It is never a pretty thing when you try to wrestle for the life of a piggy. Unless you reach the individual dying weight, you can often get a piggy back from the brink, but it takes full commitment and determination to stabilise the weight and keep it there. Once you are doing this for a number of days then exhaustion and sleep deprivation will set in. :(
You need to feed at least 60 ml a day in order to stabilise the weight over several days and make it sustainable, even if you have to fight for every single milli-litre. It is extremely tough and not pretty at all. But there is unfortunately no easy way to win a battle for life or death. :(

There is to some extent a knack with it, but it is born out of practice and experience.
 
I can’t offer anymore advice than the brilliant advice already given but one of my guinea pigs had the start of a chest infection and was prescribed a weeks course of Baytril - luckily it wasn’t bad enough and we caught it early enough that a week was enough of a course to nip it in the bud as my pig hated it! I know the vet and lots of people on the forum have said how horrible it tastes and that it can effect their taste buds which may also contribute to her not eating. He was also relatively healthy and still lost a little weight as it was effecting his taste so much. I bought him some oat hay as I thought the change from his normal Timothy hay may encourage him to eat and it did. I would also recommend trying to syringe feed more - you never know the more food/energy she has the more energy she might have to fight her illness.

I’ve also read on other posts that some vets offer to look after your guinea pigs for a fee to help syringe feed etc. If owners are unable due to work etc. So might be worth discussing with your vets if you feel that would benefit your piggy.


I would strongly recommend seeing a guinea pig specialist - I took my guinea pigs to my usual vet I take my dog to but transferred them to a specialist as they were very honest when one of my guinea pigs were ill and said they didn’t have the same experience as a specialist that sees them daily as unfortunately not many people take their small furries to vets as much as they should.

Sorry for the long rambled post! Hope some of it may help - wishing you and your piggy all the best!
 
I can’t offer anymore advice than the brilliant advice already given but one of my guinea pigs had the start of a chest infection and was prescribed a weeks course of Baytril - luckily it wasn’t bad enough and we caught it early enough that a week was enough of a course to nip it in the bud as my pig hated it! I know the vet and lots of people on the forum have said how horrible it tastes and that it can effect their taste buds which may also contribute to her not eating. He was also relatively healthy and still lost a little weight as it was effecting his taste so much. I bought him some oat hay as I thought the change from his normal Timothy hay may encourage him to eat and it did. I would also recommend trying to syringe feed more - you never know the more food/energy she has the more energy she might have to fight her illness.

I’ve also read on other posts that some vets offer to look after your guinea pigs for a fee to help syringe feed etc. If owners are unable due to work etc. So might be worth discussing with your vets if you feel that would benefit your piggy.


I would strongly recommend seeing a guinea pig specialist - I took my guinea pigs to my usual vet I take my dog to but transferred them to a specialist as they were very honest when one of my guinea pigs were ill and said they didn’t have the same experience as a specialist that sees them daily as unfortunately not many people take their small furries to vets as much as they should.

Sorry for the long rambled post! Hope some of it may help - wishing you and your piggy all the best!

I really appreciate you taking the time to reply. I will speak to my vet tomorrow. I've ordered Fibreplex and some Alfafa hay to see if that will encourage her to eat. She's been eating small amounts, and we sometimes find her in the hay. She like eating grass so we're encouraging that too. She leaped off my knee back into her cage earlier today (at a fair distance) so she's still got some energy! She had decided she had had enough of tbe syringe! I had no idea she could jump that far!
 
Please do so! We can't see your piggy and cannot comment on the medical side/prognosis of it. Any decent vet you ask for their honest opinion will usually do so and explore the various aspects with you.

Unfortunately you have to be tough in a crisis. It is never a pretty thing when you try to wrestle for the life of a piggy. Unless you reach the individual dying weight, you can often get a piggy back from the brink, but it takes full commitment and determination to stabilise the weight and keep it there. Once you are doing this for a number of days then exhaustion and sleep deprivation will set in. :(
You need to feed at least 60 ml a day in order to stabilise the weight over several days and make it sustainable, even if you have to fight for every single milli-litre. It is extremely tough and not pretty at all. But there is unfortunately no easy way to win a battle for life or death. :(

There is to some extent a knack with it, but it is born out of practice and experience.

What do you mean by "individual dying weight"?
 
What do you mean by "individual dying weight"?

There comes the point when a piggy (or a human at that) have lost any weight they can basically lose. But as size and weight vary so much so does the point when each individual reaches that point.
 
There comes the point when a piggy (or a human at that) have lost any weight they can basically lose. But as size and weight vary so much so does the point when each individual reaches that point.
Ok, thank you for explaining that.
 
Ok, thank you for explaining that.

Unfortunately as you are not mentioning how much weight your girl has lost and is still losing and what her current weight is, I have no way to judge just where you actually stand and how critical the situation really is.

But sorry if I accidentally posted on the wrong thread; I am currently jumping between several.
 
Respiratory infections can be serious in guinea pigs and can go either way. From my own personal experience, the fact that she is fighting is a good sign. Most of the pigs I've lost to respiratory infection succumbed REALLY quickly (as in within a day of showing symptoms.) The pig in my avatar, Hadley, had a respiratory infection that took several courses of (different) antibiotics, one of which really upset her stomach and made her nuts, supplements with vitamin C and probiotics, and a good month and a half of treatment, but that was two years ago and she is still here, turning 6 in the fall, no long-term effects. So yes, they can come back from hard-to-treat respiratory infections. And as I said, the fact that she is fighting it this far is a good sign.

The important thing is to get antibiotics in her and to support her while they work. This may mean probiotics/poop soup and syringe-feeding if she's not feeling well enough to be hungry. It's not always fun, but it's necessary. It may be worth asking the vet to try to culture for bacteria to try to get the right antibiotic (though ideally that's best done before any antibiotics are begun, it's still possible.) A lot of pigs get gut imbalance on antibiotics and need supplementation. Hadley did badly on Baytril and ate a chunk of my drywall because they may crave crazy things to rebalance their guts... probiotics did help. It's important to keep up the antibiotics and just support the gut... although it bugs their stomachs, they do need the meds to wipe out the bacteria. Sometimes another antibiotic will also be effective and be easier on them, sometimes you have to push through with the one that works even if they have side effects. Just keep reminding yourself it's time limited!

It's also worth talking to your vet, particularly if you have a good relationship with them. Hopefully he or she will be able to give you a realistic assessment of what's a fight worth fighting and what's just prolonging the inevitable. From my perspective, a pig that's still making a leap to the cage and nosing through the hay has not given up yet and is worth treating. In my experience, when they are losing the fight, it's obvious... they are apathetic, have no interest in food, don't move, don't pay attention to people or other pigs. You know her best, of course, but for me, with an acute infection in an otherwise-healthy pig, I would keep aggressively treating... the rest is up to her, but it's definitely possible to come back from this.

Just to add, I doubt she's silent due to lung damage or anything like that. Some pigs are squeakers, some never make a peep, good lungs and all. Hope this helps a bit. Best wishes and I hope she does well!
 
We should be syringe feeding her more often to be honest but my daughter gets really upset when we have to hold her tightly to get her to take the syringe feed and refuses to do more than a few mls at a time. Because she's so wriggly I can't do it on my own, and my husband doesn't feel comfortable handling or feeding her. I'm finding it really difficult to be honest. .
Haven't spoken to vet since I posted but was planning on phoning her tomorrow.
Check out the syringe feeding video I’ve made. It really doesn’t need to be stressful.
Today's instructional video on our Facebook page - Syringe feeding
 
Check out the syringe feeding video I’ve made. It really doesn’t need to be stressful.
Today's instructional video on our Facebook page - Syringe feeding

That has been SO helpful, thank you. I feel as though Honey may be turning a corner. She is acting more like her usual self, and has started to eat her nuggets and small amounts of veggies and hay again. Still not massively interested in hay but I guess she'll be getting some of that from tbe critical care.

I've been adding Pro-C to every syringe feed. Should I be adding it to every feed?

Still waiting on Fibreplex being delivered. Have also ordered Alfafa Hay in tbe hope that it'll encourage her to start eating hay again.

Her weight is mostly stable, around 570g (at her heaviest she was 1100g).

Is there anything else I should be doing?

Thank you so much for all your support and advice. It is so much appreciated. x
 
Unless you’ve been advised by a vet to give alfalfa for a good reason, then please be very careful with it. Alfalfa isn’t suitable for adult piggies as it isn’t a grass hay and is high in calcium. It should only be given in very small handfuls (ideally only to pregnant and nursing sows and very young babies) and it must never replace grass hay at all.
 
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