• Discussions taking place within this forum are intended for the purpose of assisting you in discussing options with your vet. Any other use of advice given here is done so at your risk, is solely your responsibility and not that of this forum or its owner. Before posting it is your responsibility you abide by this Statement

Has baytril made floofy pants lose weight?

PigglePuggle

PigglePuggle

Senior Guinea Pig
Joined
Apr 20, 2018
Messages
10,510
Reaction score
40,109
Points
2,175
Location
Liverpool
So Jezebel was back at the vets today and after a week of baytril her scabby flaky balding floofy pants are almost restored to their former glory but... my floof girl has lost a lot of weight! Vet scales said 960g which is 100g less than she usually weighs at home and 60 less than the vet weighed her at last week.
Does baytril cause weight loss, or does the bad taste and fussy upset of giving it put piggies off food, or is something else going on? Jezzy is eating but she wont come out for snacks at the moment in case its a mean trick involving baytril... poor floof, I'm giving her porridge oats and extra carrots and we're back at the vet next week to see if she's recovered...
 
I do think that some piggies with a sensitive digestion can have problems with Baytril.
Ruby suffered badly and lost a lot of weight, and had with mushy poos for weeks afterwards (despite multiple different pro-biotics and supplements).

Honestly we tried everything and in the end it just took a lot of time, patience, pro-biotics (BeneBac is our own personal favourite) and top up syringe feeding.
I personally think some weight loss is normal, and it will improve slowly once she stops the Baytril.
 
Thanks, I'll buy a probiotic for her. She seems a bit sulky and off her hay but its tricky to know if she's ill or just feeling sad and betrayed because we forced baytril in her mouth every day for a week...
 
PigglePuggle said:
Thanks, I'll buy a probiotic for her. She seems a bit sulky and off her hay but its tricky to know if she's ill or just feeling sad and betrayed because we forced baytril in her mouth every day for a week...
Click to expand...
She feels sad and betrayed right now, and is in a major sulk with you (if she is anything like Ruby anyway).
But it is like taking a human baby for vaccinations - they are outraged at the betrayal and pain, and they are unable to understand why you are doing it.
They also forgive and forget quickly, just like she will (or maybe not if she is like Ruby).

And just between you and me (and the whole Forum) I secretly like to think that in hindsight Ruby knows that I saved her life, and she forgives me for the Baytril and the 3am syringe feedings. She still hates me, but I do think she hates me a little bit less :whistle:
 
But I should maybe just add... another totally free vet check today! I have no idea why they keep giving us free follow-up care, maybe Jezzy is just a celebrity with being on the GPF advent calendar and Dr Clare wants everyone to know how she fixed Jezzy's beautiful floofy pants. And Blod's teeth and ringworm. And Puggle's bloat. And she neutered Theo. I think the piggies need to send her a xmas card...
 
Baytril can cause stomach upset in some pigs and may have put her off her food somewhat. Probiotics may help (or poop soup from a healthy pig.) Out of my pigs, about half of them were fine on Baytril and the other half had some measure of stomach upset. Hadley went kind of nuts and tried to eat non-food items like the carpets when she was on Baytril! LOL!
 
I'm very worried about my lovely floof girl, she's hiding in a not-very-comfortable hidey house and wont come out... should I pop her in a hospital cage so I can monitor her food intake and watch her poops and behaviour better? The vet checked her over thoroughly couldnt find any reason for the weight loss except the baytril but Jez looks quite a sad floof today... I've ordered some pro-c professional probiotic for her, is that any good? Please send my sad thin floof lady some healing vibes!
 
Sending Jez bucket loads of healing vibes. My vet recommends pro-c, Bracken loves the taste, grabs the syringe, it's got glucose in it so I think it's the sweet taste he loves.
 
All mine love Pro-C. For a treat I occasionally sprinkle it on some forage for them and they just lap it up. I found that the best way to give it was to put a pinch in a bit of water, suck it up in a syringe and syringe feed it. It may make Floofy Pants more amenable to a syringe too if she gets something tasty out of it. If you're worried about her, pop her in the hospital cage with a comfy hidey and some of her favourite food and loads of hay to see if you can tempt her to eat. Did you let your vet know of your concerns yesterday?
 
Betsy said:
All mine love Pro-C. For a treat I occasionally sprinkle it on some forage for them and they just lap it up. I found that the best way to give it was to put a pinch in a bit of water, suck it up in a syringe and syringe feed it. It may make Floofy Pants more amenable to a syringe too if she gets something tasty out of it. If you're worried about her, pop her in the hospital cage with a comfy hidey and some of her favourite food and loads of hay to see if you can tempt her to eat. Did you let your vet know of your concerns yesterday?
Click to expand...
I think the vet was more concerned than us as she discovered the weight loss which was very unexpected! I just thought Jezzy was sulking about the baytril. Now I'm imagining all sorts of horrible things. I think I'll get her in a hospital cage with a new fleecy hidey and a big pile of hay and some grated sweet potato mixed with porridge oats. She can help me grade these truly dreadful first year student coursework assessments :)
 
PigglePuggle said:
I think the vet was more concerned than us as she discovered the weight loss which was very unexpected! I just thought Jezzy was sulking about the baytril. Now I'm imagining all sorts of horrible things. I think I'll get her in a hospital cage with a new fleecy hidey and a big pile of hay and some grated sweet potato mixed with porridge oats. She can help me grade these truly dreadful first year student coursework assessments :)
Click to expand...
Weigh Jezebel to see if she has lost more weight since yesterday and if she has then I think it would be best to start syringe-feeding her. I find Fibreplex to be very good with a piggy who isn't eating much, as it contains a lot of fibre and probiotics and it seems to encourage them to eat more. Fibreplex can be bought at vets and online.
 
PigglePuggle said:
I think the vet was more concerned than us as she discovered the weight loss which was very unexpected! I just thought Jezzy was sulking about the baytril. Now I'm imagining all sorts of horrible things. I think I'll get her in a hospital cage with a new fleecy hidey and a big pile of hay and some grated sweet potato mixed with porridge oats. She can help me grade these truly dreadful first year student coursework assessments :)
Click to expand...
Sounds like a good idea to me! Will Jezzy Floofy Pants be strict with the marking though?
 
Jezzy has quite a stern clucky teacher voice if someone upsets her... and after the baytril I imagine her marking might be quite brutal! Jezzy is not liking hoomans at all this week...
 
PigglePuggle said:
Jezzy has quite a stern clucky teacher voice if someone upsets her... and after the baytril I imagine her marking might be quite brutal! Jezzy is not liking hoomans at all this week...
Click to expand...
Can't say I blame her really having been force fed yukky Baytril .....:vom: If only she could understand that if it tastes 'orrible it does you good! Well that's what my Mum used to tell me if I hated the medicine she was giving me (Kaolin and Morphine comes to mind :vom::vom:)
 
Its such a shame she's gone a bit sad and thin because the baytril completely cleared up in 6 days what had been a fairly irritating on-and-off for 8 weeks skin problem!
She's eaten some bistro salad anyway, when piggy daddy gets home we'll weigh her and see if she'll have a bit of critical care and some high calorie porridge mix.
I was going to get her out earlier but she'd moved to the carrot cottage and her usual arch-enemy Mad Lady Piggle was actually licking her ears and grooming her and trying to cheer her up so I didnt want to disrupt a bit of unexpected friendly bonding behaviour, they shared a salad-with-beetroot snack very nicely and normally they cant really tolerate being in the same cage wing- Piggle must be quite concerned too! Or feeling guilty as I still suspect Piggle-barbering may have started all this skin thing off...
 
Oh this is weird, Piggle, Puggle and Theo are all sitting near Jezzy and clucking and guarding her... do they know something is wrong? The vet couldnt find anything obvious last night just the unexpected weight loss... and the vet is very very good, but she's not a piggy with magic piggy intuition... please be ok lovely my floofy pants!
 
Although not a piggy, has very similar digestive/bowel stuff, my Pedro's lost weight in the last couple of months with all the antibiotics and messing with him. These meds do them up a bit bless them.
Baytril's nasty and think Zithromax, what he's on, can be such horrible ones for killing appetite etc.
Hope she'll be ok now off the horrible stuff :) x at least has helped though! x

Oats always good to mash up with food for a few calories and tastiness! :)
 
She is now off the baytril yes? How is her poo looking? Sending lots of love and vibes x
 
She's off the baytril since she saw the vet yesterday and I've not noticed any odd poops though with a herd of 5 living in over 18 square feet of cage its difficult to say, though nothing odd has caught my eye and I do climb in the C&C to clean it so I would probably have noticed!
I've a probiotic arriving tomorrow and we're back at the vets next thursday and I'm going to try cram calories into her until then. It just makes me worry in case the skin stuff and now the weight loss and her being a bit sad is a sign of her immune system being busy dealing with something more serious we dont know about...
 
These piggies do worry us so don't they? They have a way of slowing creeping into our hearts.......
 
Dont tell the other piggies but Jezebel is my favourite, I love her floofy little bottom and floofy little face so much! I've got the weighing scales and some fresh critical care and grated sweet potato porridge all ready for piggy daddy to grab her as soon as he gets home. She didnt used to mind being picked up at all but after the baytril she's very wary and she knows I cant reach her easily over the 2 C&C grid height if she runs into the middle or the back corner and I dont want to have to climb in and chase her round, that wouldnt help at all!
 
Don't worry @PigglePuggle she'll forgive you once she realises being picked up doesn't mean yukky baytril anymore but nice treats and cuddles from Piggy Daddy:nod:
 
Well Jezzy has eaten 2mls critical care from a syringe, 1ml of critical care spread on cucumber, and another 1ml critical care mixed with grated sweet potato and porridge. Her weight really is 951g on my scales which is 100g below her usual weight we last recorded at home 2 weeks ago. She's usually 1050 to 1060g. The vet weighed her as 1020g a week ago and 960g yesterday. Seems she's absolutely ravenous for food then... she stops like she's got a bit of tummy ache. Here's a photo of piggy daddy being an encouraging hay rack. She ate a bit of hay but nothing like her normal voracious hay consumption where she eats hay non-stop for 3 hours a day... I think Jezzy will be getting an extra meal with critical care and hand fed veggies and hay every day when piggy daddy gets home from school until her floofy tummy recovers from the baytril!
Poor floofy pants... 951g now when she arrived as a super-obese 1290g at the start of summer... 1060g was just about right for heft but now we're all hip bones!

20181207_165357.webp
 
You are having a rotten time with your piggies.
Hoping beautiful floofy Jezebel perks up quickly.
Remind her that I will be bringing her a bag full of carrots when we move up next year
 
Jezzy floof is much brighter today, she's had top-up syringe feeds yesterday and friday, extra veggies, and she's obsessed with the pro-C probiotic- I put an extra waterbottle with pro-C near Jezzy's favorite cage corner and its nearly empty! I put an cardboard box bed full of hay next to it, and popped Jezzy in the box, and she sat there for hours nibbling the hay, which has mostly been recycled into nice poops. Now she's floofing about eating breakfast oats :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top