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Guinea peeing blood

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Guinea Wiggies

Guinea Wiggies

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Hi people,

I am new to this forum. I have used it in the past to get advice and I decided to join.

I have three piggies, Tilly, Lilly and Tallulah:))

Little bit of history Lilly has had blood in her wee a number of times, I have taken her to the vets and they had told me that it is URI and given her baytril. It clears up but appears to be reoccuring.

This morning there was blood in her wee again. Her behaviour is normal and her weight is steady. Does anyboby know what it could be?

My guineas are my babies, can't help worrying!
 
It looks like interstitial (i.e. recurrent) cystitis; especially if it comes in about two months intervalls.

Try and give her as much unsweetened cranberry juice as she'll take as often as you can. If necessary, mix it with water. The more you can flush the bladder, the better!

You may want to ask your vet for an x-ray to exclude the possibility of bladder stones causing the cystitis; preferably an x-ray without general anaesthetics.

You could try pediatric septrin and metacam as recommended by the Guinea Lynx website, which is the best medical website for guinea pigs available. I printed it out and finally managed to convince my vets to prescribe me septrin 0.5 ml twice daily (which is an oral form of the "bactrim" that is mentioned on that link). So far, baytril is the only licensed antibiotic for guinea pigs, so it's a battle to get a vet to give another one; but you can always use the argument that so far, baytril has not managed to clear the UTI once and for all.
http://www.guinealynx.info/uti.html

Sadly, interstitial cystistis can be a real pain - I am struggling with it as well at the moment and there seems to be only so much you can do.

Make sure that you change the bedding as often as possible; ideally daily, so that the bacteria cannot transfer to the other girls.

If your vet is not open to suggestions, you may want to ask him or look for yourself for an exotics vet in your region. Guinea pigs are classed as exotics.
 
It could simply be that the Baytril isn't clearing it up properly. Like in people some anti biotics are so over used the animals become immune so your vet may need to prescribe a stronger anti biotic for it this time. My vet won't use Baytril as it is so over used most bacterial infections are becoming resistant to it now.
 
I notice you too are from Manchester, can you recommend any good guinea vets as I feel as though the one I go to doesn't know much about guinea's and simply gives baytril.
 
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