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Dental Piggie doesn’t want to eat

J

JennaMG28

New Born Pup
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Hi 😊 was wondering if I could get some advice please. We have a very poorly 4 year old piggie who hasn’t been eating or drinking properly by himself for almost a week & now only sleeps. We first noticed changes in him when we had the hot weather and hoped it was just because of that. He’s never been a completely healthy pig though and has had lots of problems. Despite that he’s never been unable to drink and eat by himself.
Some spurs were found on his teeth last week and were filed down under light anaesthetic on Saturday. We were hoping he was sorted but it hasn’t made any difference. We’re syringe feeding him a mixture of mushed dried pellets & critical care every 3 hours, and are finding it hard to maintain, and it’s a bit of a fight! He seems to be quite thirsty each time so will happily have lots of water through a syringe. We’ve tried lots of things already that we’ve found suggested online to make the food more exciting - adding some organic baby food including carrots, strawberries & apples (we’re not too worried about the sugar at the moment as he’s continuing to lose weight), but it doesn’t interest him for more then a few seconds. He does try and eat tiny bits of veg but he finds it too hard to pick up and chew. We’ve been told to call the vets back tomorrow with an update. Our vet is great & really knowledgeable but can’t find anything else obviously wrong at the moment. Any suggestions of other things we could try re feeding would be much appreciated. Thank you 😊
 
I’m sorry to hear he is unwell.
Are you weighing him daily to ensure you are getting enough mushed pellets/critical care into him? Is he eating hay?
A piggy who isn’t eating hay for themselves needs the fibre so don’t mix in too much veg as you then potentially reduce the amount of fibre intake. Will he eat grass? Is he able to eat veg if you cut it into thin strips?
If he isn’t able to pick up and chew food, then it sounds as if something is not quite right still.
The best vet for piggy dentals is Cat & Rabbit Care clinic in Northampton. We have members from all over the country who travel to him.
 
Thanks for your reply 😊 yes we’re weighing him at the same time each night. He’s yoyoing a lot - he might be 30g heavier one evening and then 50g lighter then next. Before yesterday we were giving him 2ml of Critical Care every 2 hours, but as of yesterday he is now having 5ml every 3 hours. We’re finding 5ml is the absolute limit at the moment because he’s quite unhappy. We’ve tried to offer hay and grass but he won’t touch it. He’s been vaguely interested and will toss it around and will then leave it. We’ve offered him tiny vits of veg with each feed but he’s not intretested. We’ve found he’s more interested if you give him a normal size piece of veg but then he can’t quite get hold of it. We’ve only been putting a little dollop of puréed veg in with each feed just to make it taste a bit sweeter. Northampton is really far for us to travel to. We’ve got a brill vet he goes to who is very piggie savvy, just not finding anything else wrong with him at the moment apart from his teeth which have been filed now. Will be interesting to hear what her thoughts are tomorrow re what she would plan to do next.
 
Simon and Kim Maddock at the Cat and Rabbit Clinic will be able to look into the back of his mouth without anaesthetic and tell you if it’s a dental problem. Unless spurs are completely filed down the piggie will not eat. They both do conscious dentals which take about 10 minutes with fantastic result. My boy was eating hay within 10 minutes of his conscious dental after 6 weeks of syringe feeding. They are brilliant and well worth the effort of travelling. We are there tomorrow, we travel from Cornwall
Good luck with your piggie x
 
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