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How To Make Your Guinea Pig Willingly Take A Syri

R

Rochester Piggy

Teenage Guinea Pig
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Location
Rochester, Washington, USA
So we are camping right now, and I noticed Cali wasn't drinking much. We would give her 10 10 ml syringes (or doses) of water per day and be waking up every 2 hours during the night to give her water. We would hold her, and she would fight us. The lap of the person holding her, along with Cali's tummy, would be completely soaked. We tried putting an "apron" on Cali by tearing a hole in a paper towel and putting it around her neck. A towel on the lap of the holding person helped with no wet pants! Cali would still fight us and be very stressed out. So I discovered another method to help her drink without stress.

So I waited until Cali was out enjoying some hay. Then I grabbed the syringe that hung off the side of the cage, pre-filled with spring water. I held it in the cage about 4 cm away from her mouth. Cali was very interested in it. She put her mouth around it and started sucking on it like a water bottle. I pressed the end to make water come out. It worked, with minimal dripping! When Cali stopped drinking, I simply stopped pressing the syringe. Now, when there's no more water and I go to put the syringe away, Cali actually wheeks for water!

Since then, she has begun using the water bottle, but not as often, so we still give her a syringe of water every once in a while. We don't wake her up to give water or force her to drink it.
 
why do you want to force her drinking? :) My piggies spent 7 months of thier lives without driniking a single drop of water! Now one of them discovered the bottle and seems to drink... but actually she only build a pool on the fleece and the newspapers unders tha bottle are totally wet. Therefore she is not drinking.
You are camping... are you in a cool and wet place? is it in the mountains? is Cali eating vegs? vegs and grass have water enough.
Anyway, my piggies have 5 sirynges of water (each syringe is 1 ml) if I mix some water with some drops of pure cranberry which they love.
I do that only for getting them used to the syringe, therefore if they don't want it (never happens) I give it up.
Don't worry of the water, really... my piggies would be dead now...:)
 
rome_italy said:
why do you want to force her drinking? :) My piggies spent 7 months of thier lives without driniking a single drop of water! Now one of them discovered the bottle and seems to drink... but actually she only build a pool on the fleece and the newspapers unders tha bottle are totally wet. Therefore she is not drinking.
You are camping... are you in a cool and wet place? is it in the mountains? is Cali eating vegs? vegs and grass have water enough.
Anyway, my piggies have 5 sirynges of water (each syringe is 1 ml) if I mix some water with some drops of pure cranberry which they love.
I do that only for getting them used to the syringe, therefore if they don't want it (never happens) I give it up.
Don't worry of the water, really... my piggies would be dead now...:)
Click to expand...
She's eating veg as I type... we've been putting more water on her veggies and we are camping on the west coast of the US, so it's fairly dry.
 
well, don't worry. A bell pepper is made of 95% of water, cucumber maybe even more... lettuce is watery and grass has water, too. If you see wet spot of wee, there is no point of being worried. Here at home it is very dry as I have air conditioning on all day long till midnight and my piggies are not drinking as well... maybe they only play with the bottle. I spray water on their grass and vegs...
Anyway, I don't know your country but here at the seaside the air is very wet in the evening, especially at campsites...
 
rome_italy said:
well, don't worry. A bell pepper is made of 95% of water, cucumber maybe even more... lettuce is watery and grass has water, too. If you see wet spot of wee, there is no point of being worried. Here at home it is very dry as I have air conditioning on all day long till midnight and my piggies are not drinking as well... maybe they only play with the bottle. I spray water on their grass and vegs...
Anyway, I don't know your country but here at the seaside the air is very wet in the evening, especially at campsites...
Click to expand...
Almost the entire puppy pad has been soaked with wee every day!
 
Rochester Piggy said:
Almost the entire puppy pad has been soaked with wee every day!
Click to expand...
this is what it is important...
when I was a bit worried of my piggies who never used to drink I asked two vets who simply told me that usually pigs don't drink but play with the bottle and that they take hydration from the food (just like we should do... I also hardly ever drink... but yesterday I ate almost 2 Kg of vegs and fruits and I had to run to wee a lot of times).
I know how much looks weird to us seeing a pet who don't drink at all. In my case there was the fear that mine simply didn't learn how to use the bottle because sometimes I noticed that when I used to offer the syrynge they jumped on me excited and never let the syringe go out from their mouth. In your case I see your piggie is simply not thirsty... she is not interested in the syringe, too...:) no doubt she is not thirsty as I am also not thirsty (but in this moment I am eating a big piece of fresh celery)
Have a good holiday and be sure only that Cali is enjoying the holiday, too, safe in her cage!:yahoo:
 
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