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Help needed as soon as :(

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Coconut

Coconut

Teenage Guinea Pig
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Betsy pig is currently in a very bad state 8.... Yesterday when I went to feed them their veggies (at about 10pm) I looked in their cage to find her with a lot of missing hair and easily being pushed over by the others. I got her out and she is extremely skinny and her ribs and other bones are very prominent and easily felt. It is really strange as althogh she had felt a little smaller the morning before in a matter of hours she had lost a lot of hair and weight. I quickly put her back in her cage and she was really unsteady on her feet and sort of flopped out at first. We but her in a box of her own and she was eating very well, pooing normal and wee seemed fine. In herself she also seems normal happy and aleart. She didn't seem to like her belly being touch but she never has. She was fine through the night and we took her to the vets first thing this morning to pay £30 for them to tell us they don't know what's wrong with her :(. The vet looked at her and said it doesn't feel like their is anything wrong with her belly, teeth/ mouth, etc. No sign of mites, ringworm, fungal nor scurvy. She said she could be older than what we thought she was and it could be something to do with her thigh rod, hormonal or something similar due to the quick (what she described as symettrical hair loose) and these could only be seen using a blood test although she didn't seem too keen for us to get bloods and sort of said it may just be a matter of leving her and seeing how she goes. So we've brought her home and on vet advice will have her in a seperate cage for the next 24 hours and then she how she is tomorrow and think where we want to go from there.

It just shocks me how quickly this has happened my sister was playing with them at 6pm and she seemed fine then but in 4 hours she got in a horrible state. There was no change over night but she does seem a lot steedier on her feet than when we first saw her. Does anyone have any idea of what may be wrong? Or have any similar experiances? The only things I can think of outside of my normal routine with them is that they've been out the garden for a few hours when the grass was dry and for the last couple of weeks they haven't had pellets (feel horrible about this- just kept on forgetting and the pet store is a fair bit away so I just left them with hay and veg). Since Miss Piggy died which was about three weeks ago they seemed to go a bit asbo and messed up their cage daily but I just assumed this was a reaction to loosing their friend/ not having pellets. This is another worry though of it being something infectious as Miss Piggy passed away three weeks ago and around that time my friend's rabbit and Guinea pig and another friend's Guinea pig died and her two others were quite sick as well. Miss piggy though didn't really seemed to loose weight but did loose hair the last couple of days though I am fairly sure this was the work of Lola as a number of time I caught her with her head in Miss Piggy's fur and I'm also wondering if she has done the same with Betsy? Miss Piggy's death I largely put down to the fact that she was almost 4 and had unfortunalty always been a generally sick pig. Though now I'm starting to wonder if it was something else.

Any help would be really appreciated. She's currently in our old 120cm cage on her own but I'm still very worried about her.
 
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Ok, my first thought is a lac of vit C from not having the pellets, what veg have you been feeding to provide vit C?

Has the vet prescribed any med's?

How do the others seem? It is very odd than in a matter of hours she has lost all of this weight and alot of fur..... How often do you weigh your piggies, how much has she lost?

Also i would maybe recommend getting a second opinion from a better vet.
 
No she didn't- just checked her over and took her into the other vet who is more specialised in smaller animals. And I'm in Essex/ London area.
 
Pellets are important as they contain Vit. C although some people don't give them as hay and veggies are ok.
I really cannot give much advice except could it be scurvy (lack of vit. c that causes hair loss and loss of limb use)

http://www.guinealynx.info/scurvy.html)

I really would be tempted to find anothe vet more savvy with piggies and get another opinion. Your piggy sounds very poorly indeed :...
 
Toffeewoffee said:
Ok, my first thought is a lac of vit C from not having the pellets, what veg have you been feeding to provide vit C?

Has the vet prescribed any med's?

How do the others seem? It is very odd than in a matter of hours she has lost all of this weight and alot of fur..... How often do you weigh your piggies, how much has she lost?

Also i would maybe recommend getting a second opinion from a better vet.
Click to expand...

That what my original thought it being scurvy but the vet ruled this out.

No med prescribed.

And absolutly fine which is another thing that has confused me and lead to the determination that it was not mites, ringworm, etc. And I'm really angry with myself about I've stopped weighing them about 2 months ago as my scales broke and my one attempt at using human scales didn't do anything. I'll look for the slip of paper with her last weight but the vet weighed her and she is around 500g which I know is a lot less than she once was.
 
Guinea pig slave said:
Pellets are important as they contain Vit. C although some people don't give them as hay and veggies are ok.
I really cannot give much advice except could it be scurvy (lack of vit. c that causes hair loss and loss of limb use)

http://www.guinealynx.info/scurvy.html)

I really would be tempted to find anothe vet more savvy with piggies and get another opinion. Your piggy sounds very poorly indeed :...
Click to expand...

That's what I had thought scurvy but the vet had said she doesn't think it is. I feed her a fair bit of pepper last night as an attempt to get more vit C in her and they now have pellets (today had been the day I had been getting them anyway mallethead). I think we will definatly try another vet tomorrow if she doesn't make any improvement.
 
I would personally not hang around - two weeks without pellets is not ideal (I get mine offline, delivered to my door every three weeks so never run out)
Can you get some soluble Vit. C tabs from any supermarket and give her a quarter in some water ? Asda, Tesco etc. all sell them for little over £1.
I really cannot emphasise that she needs treatment as soon as possible. It could be a number of things and I would not have been happy with the vet.
Do the other piggies allow her to eat the veggies etc. has she been bullied and had zero Vit. C intake I wonder. Always good to watch piggies eating (as some can be a bit pushy) and make sure they have all had equal share.
 
Can you get to Anne Godard - I don't know the address she's in london can someone find it I'm on my phone.
 
I think you need a 2nd opinion ASAP.

Huge weight loss and they didn't even send you away with some critical care? mallethead

You say the hairloss seems symmetrical, where abouts is the hairloss?

I would really urge you to get a 2nd opinion this afternoon if you can.

Keep us posted xx
 
Hair loss on both sides of a female can be a symptom of ovarian cysts......
 
I'll try and convince my mum to take me today then- she's pretty upset/ angry about this morning as we went there for them to tell us they didn't didn't know what was wrong with her and not give us anything either.

Is is Anne in Goddard that you are talking about? I've had a search and she is about 1 hour and 30 mins away. Not sure if my mum is willing to go that far but I'll have a try. Do you think she's be ok to make this journey?

Are the Goddard vets good in general then? We have one a couple of minuites away if so.

I don't think they gave us any CC as she is still eating really well. No idea past that though why they did/ didn't do anything. And if I'm honest personally I wouldn't say the hair loss is symmetrical as the left side is missing a fair bit ( sort of looks like it would with mites) and the right looks almost normal. It very patchy and mainly the front left side of her body- a bald patch on the head but outside of that no loss on her head/ face or right side other than a little bit just above her arm. I've found no clumps of hair so I'm thinking it's either coming out in very small amounts at a time or someone else is eating it.
 
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Coconut said:
I'll try and convince my mum to take me today then- she's pretty upset/ angry about this morning as we went there for them to tell us they didn't didn't know what was wrong with her and not give us anything either.

Is is Anne in Goddard that you are talking about? I've had a search and she is about 1 hour and 30 mins away. Not sure if my mum is willing to go that far but I'll have a try. Do you think she's be ok to make this journey?

Are the Goddard vets good in general then? We have one a couple of minuites away if so.

I don't think they gave us any CC as she is still eating really well. No idea past that though why they did/ didn't do anything. And if I'm honest personally I wouldn't say the hair loss is symmetrical as the left side is missing a fair bit ( sort of looks like it would with mites) and the right looks almost normal. It very patcy and mainly the front lest side of her body- a bald patch on the head but outside of that no loss on her head/ face or right side other than a little bit just above her arm. I've found no clumps of hair so I'm thinking it's either coming out in very small amounts at a time or someone else is eating it.
Click to expand...

I think first of all, call the Goddard Vet group and explain the situation. Tell them Anne has been recommended, what do they think.

At the moment I think it's a case of she needs to go, rather than whether or not the journey will be too much if you see what I mean?

I'm not surprised your mum is angry about the vets this morning. I would be too, and I am! If they don't know, fine, say they don't know and direct you to a place that does.

Best of luck.

Edit: It won't let me post the reply I wanted to post for some reason, keep getting an error. Upon hearing the symptoms, my concern was that it could be a ruptured ovarian cyst and that she's barbering herself due to pain/discomfort.
 
Sometimes they can't always feel them, an ultrasound might be the only way of detecting them

Amanda is trying to post a reply but cant, and i am trying to post it on her behalf and i cant either........ will PM it to you and keep trying. xx
 
I'm not sure that any of this is going to help, but what you're describing sounds very similar to what happened to one of my girls about 6 years ago. She was losing a bit of weight - had a check-up, nothing found and she was sent home as in herself she was still perfectly well.

It took just 48 hours for her weight (or at the very least the appearence of her weight) to plummet and all her hair 'fell out' - I now know that to be barbering. She had massive ovarian cysts (the biggest was almost 4cm..) that weren't felt the first time she went to the vet. We had to get her up to 550g to operate - we were syringe feeding her around the clock and keeping the pain at bay with pain-killers (I can't remember which one, but it was a fairly strong one).

You need to get her to a cavy-savvy vet as soon as you can. I don't want to worry you incase it isn't cysts - but our vet told us that had Tufty gone another 1-2 days before her op, we would have lost her.

This photo isn't brilliant, but this is what she looked like 4 days after her op:
SANY0964.jpg
 
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I think Anne is married now she maybe known as Anne Taylor - I've never saw her but she is widely recommended in the guinea pig world she used to treat Peter Gurney's pigs.
 
Just wanted to start by apologizing for my absence on this thread and forum in general- with Miss Piggy dying (in not the nicest way) and then 3 weeks later Betsy getting into a horrible state I'd decided I wanted to distance myself in everything Guinea pig outside of the actual guinea pigs. So sorry for suddenly leaving this thread hanging- thank you for the help and advice, it really is appreciated.

Betsy is still alive something that I week ago I didn't think I'd be able to say. She's actually doing a lot better and has gone from a peak low amount of 470g on the Wednesday morning to now weighing around 660g. To be fair the former was taken first thing in the morning and the later just after her dinner time a few minuites ago (though even after dinner we were only a little bit over 500g last week). This compares to her original weight averaging at around the 850gs so we've still got a little bit to go until she is at a much better weight. She is still in The cage on her own though I am looking to put her back into the normal cage when she hits around 700g as she has been pining for the others and at that point I think she will be on a much safer weight.

After writing this original post I managed to convince my mum to go to the vets again- although I wanted to go to Anne my mum wasn't as keen on any more vets let although the journey that we'd have to make so I settled for a more local one that had been recommended by a Guinea pig owning friend who had, had very good experiances with. And it again ended up being a total waste of time as they also didn't have a clue as to what was wrong with her and also managed to put us off getting bloods, etc. Although it wasn't what I wanted to do from here I had to see how it went. She was still happy, eating, peeing, pooing, etc normally so there weren't any major worries.

As I've already said her weight is looking a lot better and only gaining every day though I definatly wouldn't saying I'm feeding her much more than normal so I am lead to believe there may have been some bullying or someone not letting her to the food as much as they should have. Her skeleton can still be felt but it is a lot harder (and she's a lot tubbier) than it was last week so I thinking another 100g and she'll be back to normal in that respect. But my main concern right now is still her hair loss- she definatly hasn't lost any major amounts like she did that original night (went from normally furry pig to having lost quite a bit of hair in a matter of an hour or two) but she is still self- barbering a little bit and also itching a little bit. I not sure though if this is me making a mountain out of a molehill as she isn't do either a lot and I am at a stage where I'm jumping at every single possible problem when in reality it could just be her cleaning herself and having a normal piggie scratch. It definatly isn't symmetrical in my opinion- very much one sided spead aross a large amount of one side. I'm also fairly sure she had some help that first night since she has barely lost any noticeable amount compared to then and she also has a nice bald patch on her head which although she is an amazing little Guinea pig she isn't quite able to make if up there lol. Lola also has a thing for giving hair cuts which she sometimes likes to demonstrate.

At the moment I don't really know where I want to go from here. One thing the first vet did make us realize is that we don't know how old Betsy is and chances are she is a lot older than we realized so obviously getting more health problems will come hand in hand with that and any major work may just cause more harm than good :(. I think ideally I would want some bloods done but both vets have been pretty pessimistic about getting bloods from such a small animal and that has put me off it a lot as in some ways I think I would rather her (if she is ill) carry on living how she is comfy at home and die out peacefully rather than lots of trips to the vets to have painful procedures and take risks that may just not be worth putting her through. I also wanted to avoid putting her through to much when her weight was so low as I didn't want to push her over the edge and have a very small Guinea pig who had also stopped eating. So I think I may try another vet in a week or two and see how they feel about bloods. However, at the moment she is happy and fine and acting like nothing has happened outside of missing her friends.

Again thank you for all your help x
 
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Glynis said:
Have you checked for mites?
Self barbering can be because they're itchy.....

i'll pop some links on for you to read thru........

http://www.guinealynx.info/emergency.html#top
Click to expand...

Thanks Glynis :)- mites was/ is a thought- the vet said it wasn't mites as even though her hair had come out her skin was in good condition and all the rest of the piggies weren't showing any signs- is it possible for mites to take affect (ie the hair being pulled) but not actually show other signs like bad skin condition? I think I might treat them all for mites when she is back above 800g and I'm at a happier stage with her health just in case.
 
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