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Emeraid intensive care calcium content?

w0ss

New Born Pup
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Jul 22, 2020
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Location
Wales
Hi,

We've had a poorly piggy who lost weight and had blood in his urine as well as straining and pain when he pees. After a few trips to the vet they said he's got calcium crystals in his urine, so he needs to have a low calcium diet - they gave me a list of foods to avoid and feed.

During this time he's had a course of baytril and metacam which got the infection under control, but his weight is still fairly low (he's dropped from a stocky 1400g to around 1100g at the moment) so we've kept this up with Emeraid Intensive Care. However, Emeraid has 1% calcium content so is it a mistake to keep feeding this or is it low enough not to cause issues?

I'd just ordered 400g of the stuff, so hoping I've not just thrown 30 quid away!

Thanks for any help!
 
The need to use emeraid has to come first before any other consideration, so please don’t worry about using it
 
Thank you for putting my mind at ease :)

He's eating on his own a bit now - he's definitely munching on the hay a lot more than he was but is still only eating a tiny bit of the veggies we're giving him and he's still not drinking as much water he needs to - am trying to give him 10ml of water every few hours at the moment. We wern't able to syringe feed him as much as we had been yesterday because we ran out of emeraid (more arriving today or tomorrow), so rationed it a bit and supplemented with mushed pellets. He was down 10 or so grams today, so not too bad.

How long would you continue to feed the Emeraid? Should we be aiming for a particular weight?
 
Hi,

We've had a poorly piggy who lost weight and had blood in his urine as well as straining and pain when he pees. After a few trips to the vet they said he's got calcium crystals in his urine, so he needs to have a low calcium diet - they gave me a list of foods to avoid and feed.

During this time he's had a course of baytril and metacam which got the infection under control, but his weight is still fairly low (he's dropped from a sticky 1400g to around 1100g at the moment) so we've kept this up with emeraid intensive care. However, emeraid has 1% calcium content, so is it a mistake to keep feeding this or is it low enough not to cause issues?

I'd just ordered 400g of the stuff, so hoping I've not just thrown 30 quid away!

Thanks for any help!

Hi and welcome

The highest amount of calcium comes by water and by your pellets. Has your vet recommended to filter your water and limiting any pellets to 1 tablespoon max per piggy per day? Even the pellets lowest in calcium contain more than the veg highest in it (kale).

When you are feeding emeraid, you are not feeding more than comes with the pellets and the veg you are not feeding. The weight will come back slowly when the body is ready and to the degree that there is no overweight. What you are looking for at this stage is to stabilise the weight.

Please be aware that a diet too low in calcium is as dangerous and damaging in the long term as is a high calcium diet.

Please follow the special diet advice in our guide; it is not a guick fix as it takes several weeks to kick in but they will work in the long term. All we can say about our diet recommendations is that they work in practice; our long term members haven't had bladder stone problems since they switched to filtering water and reducing the pellet amount - in my case that is now 7-8 years.
Make sure that the diet contains a mix of some higher nutrient green and a good amount of watery veg like cucumber, lettuce and celery to encourage regular pees and flushing of the bladder to prevent a build up of bacteria and cystals.
Long Term Balanced General And Special Needs Guinea Pig Diets

The best thing you can do for overall comfort in the urinary tract is to give supplementary glucosamine in order to support the natural glucosamine coating of the beleaguered bladder walls after the crystals have been banging into them. The glucosamine coat prevent the corrosive urine from attacking the tissue of the walls. It really makes a lot of difference with any of the bladder issues but especially when you are dealing with a cystitis (bladder infection), whether it is a one-off bacterial one or a recurring sterile (i.e. non-bacterial one that cannot be got on top of with an antibiotic).
The easiest way is by mixing the contents of 1 capsule of feliway cystease with 2 ml of water, shake it and wait until has dissolved; shake again before use. You can give either 1 ml of the solution every 12 hours or 2 ml every 24 hours.

Again, it is not an immediate quick fix but it will contribute to your boy feeling better in the medium turn and being able to put on weight again on his own. It will also help in case you are dealing with a sterile interstitial cystitis (i.e. a non-bacterial recurring cystitis) which has become a lot more common over the last decade but is a problem not much know outside vet circles that see lots of piggies. Glucosamine and metacam are key in managing the symptoms during the regular flare ups. If symptoms recur, then you are most likely to be dealing with sterile IC.
 
Thank you so much for such a comprehensive reply!

The vet hadn't recommended filtering the water. We're in S Wales so our water isn't particularly hard.. however will try to find the old brita jug I had years ago :)

He's currently got Burgess Excel Pellets (the mint ones) which appear on the lower side for calcium, so hopefully he's ok there. He's barely touching them at the moment, although I did catch him have a little nibble at them yesterday, which is great as he'd been off them for a good 2 weeks.

The vet recommended giving him 0.3ml of Abidec multivitamins for children 2x a day. We've got 15ml of Metacam which should keep him going for a month.

I'll order those Glucosamine feliway cystease now and get him on them ASAP.

Thank you again - will bookmark the post you linked and work on getting his diet right!
 
Hi just wanted to post an update and ask for some more advice.

We're now filtering his water, continuing to feed emeraid 3-4 times a day and feeding as much water as he'll take every time too. I'm now giving him cytease although at a far lower dose than you suggested because the first day I gave it to him he seemed to really be off his water and food. I'm mixing it with ~5ml of water and giving him 1ml per day. We're also keeping up with 0.225ml of metacam twice a day (rather than 0.45ml in one go once per day) and giving him the abidec multivitamins 2x 0.3ml per day. He finished his antibiotics (baytril) a week ago.

We noticed blood in his urine again last weekend, but it seemed to clear up in the week, but it's come back again over the weekend. He's also very much off his food and water, and only seems to eat when he sits with us (usually put him on a mat on the sofa and give him plenty of hay - he'll happily munch for an hour or so. Note all this started when his cagemate (they'd only been together around 6 weeks) died and we've been unable to get another for him.

The vet suggested an X-ray for the next step, but by this point we've spent about £250 at the vet (3 visits, microscopy + ABX and metacam) and the X-ray is going to need anaesthetic, which pushes the price up to another ~£160. It's just getting beyond what we can afford to spend on him. Are there any other suggestions of what we could be doing?

My feeling was that he'd started to show some improvements over the week, but the blood in the urine and his weight still not increasing is worrying me :(
 
He's now urinating blood again (had gone clear again yesterday and he's lost around 60g overnight.despite 5 syringe feeds yesterday. I don't think he's eating or drinking on his own at all :(
 
That is a lot of weight to lose, it doesn’t sound as if he is eating.
How much is he taking in the syringe feeds in a 24 hour period?
You need to take him back to the vet
 
We're taking him to the vet in an hour. We're syringing 1 large scoop (+a bit) of emeraid 5 times a day and mixing a bit of pineapple juice in. Probably about 25ml at a time, although we're watering it down slightly more than 1:1. He's still eating hay by himself, but obviously not at a high rate. We're also syringing as much water as possible. He's still been peeing and pooing a lot, so I'm not sure why he's losing so much :/
 
We're back from the vet, he's going for an x-ray on weds. Got another course of baytril in the meantime. I've got some proC probiotic to try to get his guts moving again this time
 
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