Impaction question

[Amylicious]

Hi all

I'm a first-time Guinea Pig owner. Our boar is a rescue, but we're pretty sure he's no older than 3- we have had him 2 years, and he wasn't fully grown when we got him.

We noticed he's been wheeking a lot recently (almost incessantly) and when we checked it out, he was impacted. After watching a YouTube video, we cleaned him out... poor guy, it did NOT look fun!

My question is this - I understand this normally happens to older boars, but he's only three? Could it have been caused by a problem with his diet?

He normally gets a handful of guinea pig dry mix every day, a handful of hay, and a treat - normally peppers or carrots, but sometimes dried dandelion or strawberry leaves/stalks.

The other thing is that I found what LOOKED like a macademia nut skin in the impaction. It could have been something else... but maybe the babysitter who looked after him when we were on holiday fed it to him, and this has caused the problem.

Now this has happened once, will it definitely happen again? How can we make it less likely?

 

[Caviesgalore (EPGPR)]

Hello there and welcome to the forum.

I'm sorry to hear that your little guy has been suffering from impaction, sadly it is quite a common issue with boars, however, with your help your little piggy should be fine. Now you know he has a problem, if you check him daily and keep on top of the impaction it hopefully won't be so bad again. Have a look through this link it has some useful tips for cleaning boy bits http://www.guinealynx.info/impaction.html

Regarding piggy diet, you say you feed a handful of hay daily - a guinea pig's diet should be made up of 80% hay with the remainder being dry food and veggies. It might be worth trying to increase the amount of hay your boy has to see whether that makes a difference.

I'm afraid I can't help you with the nut issue - it might just be that the impaction had been there a while and some of the poo had become hard. Well done for spotting the problem.

 

[Lil-Ninnibig]

He needs a wider variety of veggys and fruit and unlimited hay all day noy a handful a day. Try him with fresh dandelion leavea out of the garden washed with cold water first, cabbage, apple,grass, brocolli,orange,bell peppers, carrots,strawberrys,celery,kale,spinach... My boar is 3 now and touch wood has never had impaction thank god and i dread the day he does so i make sure he has a wide variety of fibre in his diet through his hay and veggys x

 

[Hanwombat]

I've had two boars with impaction and they developed it between 1 - 2 years so I was quite unlucky I guess.
Put probiotics in the water if he wont eat the impaction so he gets extra nutrients.

 

[lauraboara]

One of my young boars Tea Cake has had an impaction recently and it took some shifting. With some advice from here, baby oil did the trick and the lump that came out was poop mixed with boar glue blob - lovely. There was also hay and hair too for good measure. So they do collect some interesting items when bum dragging etc. He is bouncing now!
Hope some increased hay and veggies helps your boys to avoid further problems.