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Ill guinea pig - first experience to share

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bessiehen

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Hello, I thought I'd share the symptoms, illness and treatment of Clive in case anyone is searching for similar (something I often do on the forum!) I couldn't bring myself to post whilst he was seriously ill, I don't think I could have coped with the nice messages I know I would have received (and thankyou to the members who responded to my private messages) - it's been very hard to control my emotions, but now Clive is thankfully OK, hurrah!

1st symptom Tuesday- clear fluid from one nostril. Took him to vets next day. Prescribed 0.4ml antibiotics a day (engemycin), vet said it could be nasal bacteria.

2 - Thursday morning, not really interested in food. Thursday evening, refusing to eat and only produced 10 poops all day. Rang vet thinking they would just say 'change his antibiotics', only to be told this is very serious and life threatening, guinea pigs need to eat and poop constantly - bring him in now (so if anyone is experiencing this - TAKE THEM TO THE VETS ASAP!).

Thursday at vets, given 1ml 'gut mover' (metoclop something), a pain relief injection, told to liquid feed sachet food every 5-6 hours, give him pain relief in morning and gut mover every 5 - 6 hours. This was one of the worst nights of my life - it was awful trying to feed him. Now that I know my vets well, and know my pig's preferences, I personally will be leaving him at the vets should he ever need overnight care, but at the time with the stress etc, we did what we thought was right.

3 - Friday morning, back at the vets at 8.30 (sent his bag of 17 tiny dry poops with him - the vet said it was very useful to see them for himself, tho my husband felt very self conscious!), vet pleased with progress and told us to carry on with antibiotics but nothing else.

More and more poops started appearing, and he started to get his appetite back, but then ...

4 - runny poops :( After 6 days of antibiotics, we rang the vet who told us to stop them and feed him a bit of probiotic yoghurt twice a day.

So, after what seems like a lifetime of checking poops, counting poops, hand feeding veggies, syringe feeding meds and yoghurt - today Clive is squeaking for his dinner, eating it all up pretty much, and doing lots of poops of the proper size / colour / consistency. And his nose is dry. Phew. We are very lucky to have access to an exotics vet, and we were able to speak to him by phone every time we needed to. I can't believe we could have lost Clive so quickly, and I'm so happy he is OK now. Hope everyone else with poorly piggies has happy endings xx
 
Great that Clive has made it with a good vet and - as importantly - your good care! Sadly, guinea pigs can go downhill very quickly. :(

It is always heartbreaking for us to see a new thread in the Rainbow Bridge Section headed by the name of an ill piggy.
 
vets again!

So after recovering really well, woke up today to find dark red splodges on his bedding which we worried may be blood (last night when cleaning after floor time we noticed pinkish wee but didn't know which pig had done it). As he has been poorly we took him to the vets tonight, and luckily the vet is not too concerned. He gave him a good squeeze, to check and try and make him pee (which he didn't!), had a look at the bedding we'd taken in, but said nothing else seemed wrong with him.

He gave us a great tip though, he said if we want to see if it is wee in the blood (rather than that thing with the strange name I can't remember - ph something!) to syringe up some wee (easy for us cos we have wooden floors), then put it in a tube and spin it. If it's blood, the red bits will separate from the wee. If it's not, it will stay all mixed red together. He also told us guinea pig wee can vary in colour from cloudy to pink to brick red and no one really knows why.

I think my husband thinks I'm over reacting with all these vet visits but I would rather spend the time and money to have a healthy pig, than risk not taking him. Just glad it's good news ... I hope!
 
Food can have an effect on the colour of urine - it can have a high iron content and when it oxidises when in contact with the oxygen in the air it will turn orange/brown (rust). The presence of porphyrin can also cause pigmentation of the urine.

Food colourant - natural and artificial - can effect the pee, carrots, beetroot, peppers etc.

Food with a high Vit A content (eg dandelions) can cause 'red urine' too and is nothing to worry about.

HTH

Suzy x
 
Thank you SuzyGPR. I'm so glad we took him to the vets ASAP as there is mroe red wee in the cage today and I would have been fretting. I was wondering if it may have had something to do with his recent illness? He went off a lot of his old favourite foods, and for the past couple of weeks would only eat salad (especially the dark red leaves), grass, cucumber and broccolli. Then in the past couple of days (red wee time) he had started to eat peppers, carrot etc again, and a piece of satsuma. It's so worrying when they are poorly :( On the bright side, Burt has just got his photo in Guinea Pig Magazine, he he. Will try and get a good pic of Clive now that he is better.
 
So last night, I saw Clive do a wee, I mopped it up with kitchen towel, it was totally clear. About 2 minutes later it started turning pale pink on the towel, within 10 minutes it was dark red. What's that all about?! Who knew guinea pig wee could be so weird!
 
bessiehen said:
So last night, I saw Clive do a wee, I mopped it up with kitchen towel, it was totally clear. About 2 minutes later it started turning pale pink on the towel, within 10 minutes it was dark red. What's that all about?! Who knew guinea pig wee could be so weird!
Click to expand...

Thats the iron (II) in wee reacting with oxygen in the air and becoming iron(III) which is what gives rust its colour. Its perfectly normal but can give a massive fright.
 
Thank you. What's still confusing me though, is that both piggies have exactly the same diet, yet this is only happening to the one who has been ill recently. And it's happening pretty much non-stop since the start of the week. Given that he was ill and had stopped eating, I was just giving him whatever he wanted to eat, but now that he is back to normal diet wise is there anything I should be giving more / less of, or does this iron / red wee really not matter in terms of health? Thank you.
 
I have a pig at the moment that has very pigmented urine. Magdalena had a very serious problem following a pregnancy, she lost a large amount of blood during an internal bleed. Now that she is recovering her body is breaking down the old blood and excreting the waste products.

As Clive has recently had an illness it is quite possible that the wee is the result of the recovery process while his body deals with the now dead infection and its by-products.

Suzy x
 
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