Countrylass
Teenage Guinea Pig
A little over a decade ago we lost the much loved long term dental pig Daisy. She was a master in not accepting food - far "too upset" after having her teeth burred. Foods she had been able to eat the day before would become impossible to eat just 24 hours later.
Fast forward to the here and now - Jazz has been living on her own between the two groups since losing her sister Mags in August. We've tried bonding her with both of the groups but she gets too stressed at being the centre of attention. Our plan was to adopt a couple of sows from Coseley Rescue but Dave caught a mild case of the sniffles and Audrey's cyst got infected so we put adopting on hold.
Then we get to two weeks ago. Jazz suddenly lost the use of her back legs, had a wet right nostril and her right front paw was scrunched up. Despite this, she was still bright, perky and hungry. Things went well until last Wednesday when she decided her teeth didn't work. We got her into the vets, showed the vet the videos of her trying to walk and the slight head tilt to the right. The vet thought her right eye was more prominent than the left, but couldn't find much else wrong with her. As Jazz wasn't very mobile, we opted for a conscious x-ray. The little madam decided that she would try and escape during the x-ray so only one decent image was captured. The main areas the vet wanted to see were Jazz's head and hips and the image wasn't good enough for this. We decided against sedating Jazz to get a clearer x-ray as we wouldn't gain much for the risk. The vet prescribed Baytril and Metacam to see if these made a difference.
Jazz has discovered that if she works her mouth around, she can produce enough spit to spit the Baytril out so we end up with a droplet on her bottom lip. She's refusing to eat hay and grass and does her best to spit some of the syringe food out on occasion. I can honestly say, this is the first time a piglet has managed to spit the antibiotics out. All of my fingers are crossed for the medication to work as she is quite a strong willed character and I would love to find her someone to bond with.
Fast forward to the here and now - Jazz has been living on her own between the two groups since losing her sister Mags in August. We've tried bonding her with both of the groups but she gets too stressed at being the centre of attention. Our plan was to adopt a couple of sows from Coseley Rescue but Dave caught a mild case of the sniffles and Audrey's cyst got infected so we put adopting on hold.
Then we get to two weeks ago. Jazz suddenly lost the use of her back legs, had a wet right nostril and her right front paw was scrunched up. Despite this, she was still bright, perky and hungry. Things went well until last Wednesday when she decided her teeth didn't work. We got her into the vets, showed the vet the videos of her trying to walk and the slight head tilt to the right. The vet thought her right eye was more prominent than the left, but couldn't find much else wrong with her. As Jazz wasn't very mobile, we opted for a conscious x-ray. The little madam decided that she would try and escape during the x-ray so only one decent image was captured. The main areas the vet wanted to see were Jazz's head and hips and the image wasn't good enough for this. We decided against sedating Jazz to get a clearer x-ray as we wouldn't gain much for the risk. The vet prescribed Baytril and Metacam to see if these made a difference.
Jazz has discovered that if she works her mouth around, she can produce enough spit to spit the Baytril out so we end up with a droplet on her bottom lip. She's refusing to eat hay and grass and does her best to spit some of the syringe food out on occasion. I can honestly say, this is the first time a piglet has managed to spit the antibiotics out. All of my fingers are crossed for the medication to work as she is quite a strong willed character and I would love to find her someone to bond with.
The Baytril seems to have cleared up her wet nostril and for the first time since she fell ill, I've seen her try to eat her own poo (couldn't quite manage it but the desire was there). I'm going to ask the vet about physio to replace the lost muscle mass in her back legs as we had a bit of almost sliding on to her side last night in her exhaustion.