Drezella
Adult Guinea Pig
Hello everyone,
This is day 14 of our journey, and will be the last update for now. To those who have followed our journey, thank you. Also thank you to everyone who has given me advice and information throughout the past few weeks.
I have decided to change my boys diet gradually over the next few weeks to the IC diet, as this morning whilst cleaning out the cage I noticed some calcium deposits in my boys wee and what might possibly be bladder sludge (but I'm not sure). It was a powdery white substance, it didn't feel gritty.
Overall them seem like very happy boys, but I want them to be as healthy as possible too, so I have decided to swap their veggies over to those on the IC diet, and eventually once I'm nearly at the end of my burgess food stock I think I'm going to swap them over to vitakraft and see if that helps.
I also noticed that Paddy had a funny brownish stain just above his nose this morning. At first I was worried because I thought it might be blood, so I picked him up and checked him and Rohan. There were no signs of any blood, scabs or wounds anywhere and there was no blood or discharge coming from their noses. So I thought for a while about what could have caused it, and I narrowed it down to two possibilities. The first was that I put some brown paper into their cage last night for a bit of extra warmth in their bed. So Paddy could have rubbed himself against that. I have now removed it, just in case it was that. Or it could be the cat litter that I put in yesterday at the bottom of the boy's hay tray. The litter is cardboard based, dust extracted etc, so I thought it'd be safe, but just as a precaution I've removed it all from the cage, in case he's rubbed his nose in it or ate any of it. They've now got a puppy pee pad in the bottom of the tray. I'm going to monitor him to see how he gets on.
Excuse the blurry picture. You can just about make out the strange brown stain on Paddy's nose:
As Paddy had a brown stain near his nose and Rohan had some veggie juice stains on his back (how he got stains on his back I'll never know), I decided to give both boys a bath. I prepared the sink and put about 1 cm of lukewarm water in it with some piggie shampoo and laid a flannel out on the bottom, so that they could grip. I had a jug of water ready to rinse them and a towel laid out for drying them. I bathed Paddy first, he was really good, he was nervous but didn't freak out completely, I was able to gently wipe the side of his face with the wet flannel and I think I've got rid of most of the stain, but I'm not 100% sure until he's dry. Then it was Rohan's turn, he was good too, he did panic more than Paddy and tried to jump out a few times, eventually he settled and used my hand as a platform to stand his front legs up on. So that was helpful as I was able to rinse his belly and back easily. I dried them both off and put them back in the cage. The heating is on in the house so hopefully they'll dry off fairly quickly. They are happily eating their pellets and hay now and it will soon be tea time. I was glad that I managed to bathe them alone and that they were brave boys. 
The thing i've yet to conquer is nail clipping, but hopefully my friend (who also owns piggies) might be visiting me at the weekend, so I'll get her to help me clip them as they are getting very sharp now.
Hopefully I've got rid of the weird brown stain on his nose.
This is day 14 of our journey, and will be the last update for now. To those who have followed our journey, thank you. Also thank you to everyone who has given me advice and information throughout the past few weeks.
I have decided to change my boys diet gradually over the next few weeks to the IC diet, as this morning whilst cleaning out the cage I noticed some calcium deposits in my boys wee and what might possibly be bladder sludge (but I'm not sure). It was a powdery white substance, it didn't feel gritty.
Overall them seem like very happy boys, but I want them to be as healthy as possible too, so I have decided to swap their veggies over to those on the IC diet, and eventually once I'm nearly at the end of my burgess food stock I think I'm going to swap them over to vitakraft and see if that helps.
I also noticed that Paddy had a funny brownish stain just above his nose this morning. At first I was worried because I thought it might be blood, so I picked him up and checked him and Rohan. There were no signs of any blood, scabs or wounds anywhere and there was no blood or discharge coming from their noses. So I thought for a while about what could have caused it, and I narrowed it down to two possibilities. The first was that I put some brown paper into their cage last night for a bit of extra warmth in their bed. So Paddy could have rubbed himself against that. I have now removed it, just in case it was that. Or it could be the cat litter that I put in yesterday at the bottom of the boy's hay tray. The litter is cardboard based, dust extracted etc, so I thought it'd be safe, but just as a precaution I've removed it all from the cage, in case he's rubbed his nose in it or ate any of it. They've now got a puppy pee pad in the bottom of the tray. I'm going to monitor him to see how he gets on.
Excuse the blurry picture. You can just about make out the strange brown stain on Paddy's nose:
As Paddy had a brown stain near his nose and Rohan had some veggie juice stains on his back (how he got stains on his back I'll never know), I decided to give both boys a bath. I prepared the sink and put about 1 cm of lukewarm water in it with some piggie shampoo and laid a flannel out on the bottom, so that they could grip. I had a jug of water ready to rinse them and a towel laid out for drying them. I bathed Paddy first, he was really good, he was nervous but didn't freak out completely, I was able to gently wipe the side of his face with the wet flannel and I think I've got rid of most of the stain, but I'm not 100% sure until he's dry. Then it was Rohan's turn, he was good too, he did panic more than Paddy and tried to jump out a few times, eventually he settled and used my hand as a platform to stand his front legs up on. So that was helpful as I was able to rinse his belly and back easily. I dried them both off and put them back in the cage. The heating is on in the house so hopefully they'll dry off fairly quickly. They are happily eating their pellets and hay now and it will soon be tea time.
I was glad that I managed to bathe them alone and that they were brave boys. The thing i've yet to conquer is nail clipping, but hopefully my friend (who also owns piggies) might be visiting me at the weekend, so I'll get her to help me clip them as they are getting very sharp now.Hopefully I've got rid of the weird brown stain on his nose.
