• 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

HELP! Poor Henry :(

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jaclyn
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
J

Jaclyn

Hi all,

About a week and a half ago, my boyfriend and I took in two rescues. They are only about five weeks old, a boy and a girl. When we received them, the boy had extremely runny poo, which stuck a great deal. The girl, however, is completely fine. The previous owner had them together, so I would think she would have it if it was contagious.

The previous owner also neglected to give me the food they were on so I could transition them, so they went straight to my feed- Oxbow. Also, the only veggies they received was carrots when they were with their previous owner.

When I got them, I separated them and pulled all fruits and veggies. The girl, since, has been slowly introduced and loves her variety of veggies she's given. The boy, however, still is not receiving any. He's being syringe-fed vitamin C.

He STILL has intense, runny poo that stinks something awful! Now, the kicker is that he ACTS completely fine. He eats, drinks, plays just as well as the girl, perhaps a very very little bit less than her. He is very underweight though.

We took them both to the vet last week. She put the boy on Albon, in order to treat if there are parasites. We recently sent in a fecal sample and got the test results back- negative. He has no parasites in his system. SO WHAT THE HECK IS IT?!

I'm planning on calling my vet again today to see if she needs to see him again, but I'm also in the process of looking at another vet to switch to, so I'm not sure. Also, I live in the *.S so i'm not sure I'd be able to get the same resources as you could in the UK.

Any help you guys could give would be awesome, as I've completely exhausted my brain trying to figure out what this poor little guy has. :(
 
Irritable bowel

I'm not sure if this is of any help, but perhaps your poor little lad just has an irritable bowel. So food isn't being digested properly but just going through too fast - the signals in the gut are set wrongly. This can happen after illness, through sensitivity to a kind of food, or after antibiotics. Try a probiotic to try to rebalance the flora in his gut as it will probably be all wrong due to the food whizzing through. I believe it's best to syringe feed him this, rather than just put it into the water.

The other obvious one is fibre - I am assuming he's eating loads of hay - but there are other good sources. I may be all wrong in suggesting this, I can only go by what I've done for my piggies, but All Bran cereal helped and was happily eaten as a food supplement.

Also I had a piggie who wasn't drinking enough and was dehydrated so I put a tiny amount of salt and a small teaspoon of sugar into the water. That helped, both with liquid rehydration and liquid uptake.

Is it constant diarhhoea? After his bottom is cleaned is it always pooey again straight away? Does he get attacks about twenty mins after raiding the dried food? Does he drink a great deal all at once? Does he ever show signs of being uncomfortable in his gut? There might be a pattern to this. His gut might cope better if he wasn't allowed to fill up to full all at once on dried food for example.

Hope this helps, best of luck, Sarah x
 
What kind of probiotic would you recommend? I can try the cereal too, I'm sure he would love it. He has QUITE the appetite!

It is definitely constant diarrhea. I give him "baths" by wiping him down with baby wipes, but he's still a mess minutes after. If I wipe his bum, it still keeps running, immediately. Poor lil guy. :(

He has a constant supply of food- we make sure we take out his pooped on hay and put in brand new several times a day, in addition to making sure he has his pellets. I'm not really sure if he eats too fast, but he does like to sit by the hay and munch for awhile.

Thanks for the advice!
 
Hay - And more hay! Ideally timothy hay.

And very little of other foods with high energy levels (sweet tasting fresh, alfa alfa grass, etc).

He may well have a bacteria imbalance in his gut, so plenty of fibre to keep it moving healthily, not too much sugar as bad bacteria can thrive and overcome the population of good gut bacteria if there's plenty of free energy floating around for them, and probiotic. I use Avipro, but have used Fibreplex in the past and found it very good. Just a bit more of a pain to syringe as it's a paste whereas the Avipro is made up with water.

Avipro also contains electrolytes (a bit like Brondo, The Thirst Mutilator ;) ) which he may well need if he is losing so much fluid out his back end like this. Might be worth getting some Dioralyte (think that's the spelling) or pharmacy own brand equivalent too.

I know some people advocate charcoal for this kind of illness, not personally sure if it works more by firming things up, or by absorbing toxins produced by the bad bacteria, but might be worth asking around about (note, I wouldn't give it till I'd had knowledgeable advise on that one).

So bottom line is lots of hay, either specific timothy (dustfreehay.co.uk has some American at the moment I think, bit pricey but good stuff) or maybe the Excel Forage as I believe that is mostly timothy (available at plenty of pet shops). And a good flooding of probiotic to help balance out gut bacteria levels, as well as keeping his fluids up.

No illness is "easy" to cure, but so long as he doesn't get too grumplepiggy on a high fibre diet (I'd be a little loathed with Allbran typed foods as I seem to recall they're quite energy rich to get us humans to eat them?) there's every chance he'll soon be fine :)
 
Jaclyn, I am sorry to hear Henry is having such problems. It is hard when you have done the usual treatments and nothing helps. Is he being given extra fluids to compensate for the fluids lost in the diarrhea? The last thing you want is dehydration on top of his other issues. Syringing a rehydration preparation, or injecting fluids, will be necessary until the diarrhea stops.

A good probiotic available in the US is Bene-Bac for Mammals. It comes in quite a large syringe tube, pink and white in colour. It is a gel; you syringe a little bit out onto your finger and wipe it into the piggie's mouth. Easiest probiotic I have ever used (I get it sent to me by an American friend). If you would like a link to show you the exact product, let me know.
 
He may have a gut infection. Suggest trying Oral Baytril 2.5% at a dose rate of 0.4ml twice daily for 10 days.
 
alcesterpigs said:
He may have a gut infection. Suggest trying Oral Baytril 2.5% at a dose rate of 0.4ml twice daily for 10 days.
Click to expand...

Normally your advice is maybe pushing things a little, but in this case I personally believe it to be unutterably wrong!

Baytril is an excellent antibiotic. In that as a substance designed to impair and/ or destroy bacteria, it can be quite effective. It's quite broad spectrum. And when giving it to a pig with another form of infection, it frequently causes gut problems. Why? Because it attacks the vast majority of bacteria in the gut, GOOD AND BAD. You give probiotic during a course of antibiotic to redress these issues, why on earth would you give something that will most likely exacerbate the problem in some attempt to cure it!?

What is needed if there is bad bacteria overpopulating the gut, is a means of countering that and achieving the healthy normal balance. Baytril used in this instance would be like a scorched earth policy - The bad would be killed, but at the expense of the good (and highly likely the pig too as a result). Instead, creating the conditions suitable for the good bacteria, and ensuring there's high levels of good bacteria in the gut, are the key. Hence the use of a good probiotic, and a diet that stifles the activity of the bad. So Avipro, Fibreplex, Bene Bac (never got my hands on some being in the UK< but heard it's good), and a diet of low energy high fibre foods, predominantly timothy hay, would be by far the most beneficial approach in my opinion. And having had more than one run in with gut bacteria imbalance I can certainly vouch for this approach in my own piggies.
 
Thanks so much! He is due to be on the Albon for another few days, at the least. I'm waiting to see if my vet will FINALLY call me back (she's not very good with that...). However, since his results came back negative for parasites, and Albon is used to treat the internal parasites, I would assume I could take him off of it?

I will pick up some Bene-Bac and get him started on that tonight! I just wonder if I should take him off the Albon too?
 
In 20 years of keeping guinea pigs I have never given a probiotic.
Please check with CCT regarding gut infections. Baytril is excellent for treating these problems, preferably in tablet or oral suspension form.
I am sure other posters can make up there own minds as to whether I am "pushing it a bit" or am "unutterably wrong".
Maybe a moderator would again like to ask everyone to be more rational in their comments.
 
I'm also very confused - my vet (who is VERY well versed in guinea pigs and has additional qualifications in small animal surgery) has stated quite clearly that Baytril is NOT suitable for pigs with GI problems as it not only kills off infection, it goes a good way towards stripping the GI tract of most of the "good" bacteria too. Hence the probiotic.

The CCT may be good for advice but depending on the day there are NOT always vets present. It is NOT the be all and end all of cavy healthcare.
 
What is the problem with the CCT? I am sure there are lots of us who would like to read your honest opinion, there is room for all points of view on this forum.
There are thousands gps who have been helped by the advice and/or treatment given from there.
 
If you want to start another thread about the CCT feel free. This thread is not the place to be going round in circles with one opinion or another regarding their practices.
 
I know when I had a very young pig with an URI, she was started on Baytril and it had some horrible side effects, just like most human broad spectrum antibiotics. She went right off her food and it gave her a really upset tum. Luckily the URI cleared up and the side effects stopped when the course of ABs were finished.
 
Thanks everyone. I found some Bene-Bac at a local pet store and started him on a little bit of it last night. Hopefully I'll see some improvement soon!

It just sucks to see this little guy have such a bad start on life. :(
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top