Hi,
One of our pigs, a 5 month old called Pip, had a scare a few days ago where he managed to wriggle free and leap from waist-knee height and land on patio while he was being transported indoors from the hutch. Thankfully he showed no signs of internal damage and only had a small graze on his face/lip where he landed, we gave him a full check-over then took him to the vets the next day and they said he looks totally fine but prescribed some probiotics and metacam as he seemed to want to eat as normal but looked awkward trying to find a comfortable way to pick food up.
A few days later and he's doing much better with his scrape mostly healed and is back to his normal self / eating properly, but this morning I noticed that when he stands still, he seems to keep gently closing and opening his right eye a lot.
I took him out and had a good look and I can't see anything lodged in the areas around his eye, nor does it look gunky, swollen or discolored (His eye itself doesn't show any signs of cloudiness), he doesn't seem irritated by it at all (He has been caught cleaning his whole face/eyes area as normal a few times) and is his normal energetic self.
Vets is usually the first stop when we notice something wrong, but all the local vets we have been to don't seem to be all that knowledgeable on guinea pigs and the exotic vet isn't back until next Wednesday (A year ago we had a rescue pig that had bones growing the wrong way in his feet which resulted in uncomfortable looking toes and a bad case of bumblefoot/possible infection of the bone, it took months of visiting different vets, being given different meds with no improvement, until we finally learned about the exotic vet, who seemed to notice and know about things none of the others picked up on and put him on some specific medication that had him much better in a few weeks)
Anyway, any other experiences like this with obvious causes / would it better taking him to the vets immediately or keeping an eye on it and maybe going to exotics next week? He's already on metacam as I said, is there anything else we could do similar to other animals like give him an eye bath/give the area a good wipe down with saline solution?
One of our pigs, a 5 month old called Pip, had a scare a few days ago where he managed to wriggle free and leap from waist-knee height and land on patio while he was being transported indoors from the hutch. Thankfully he showed no signs of internal damage and only had a small graze on his face/lip where he landed, we gave him a full check-over then took him to the vets the next day and they said he looks totally fine but prescribed some probiotics and metacam as he seemed to want to eat as normal but looked awkward trying to find a comfortable way to pick food up.
A few days later and he's doing much better with his scrape mostly healed and is back to his normal self / eating properly, but this morning I noticed that when he stands still, he seems to keep gently closing and opening his right eye a lot.
I took him out and had a good look and I can't see anything lodged in the areas around his eye, nor does it look gunky, swollen or discolored (His eye itself doesn't show any signs of cloudiness), he doesn't seem irritated by it at all (He has been caught cleaning his whole face/eyes area as normal a few times) and is his normal energetic self.
Vets is usually the first stop when we notice something wrong, but all the local vets we have been to don't seem to be all that knowledgeable on guinea pigs and the exotic vet isn't back until next Wednesday (A year ago we had a rescue pig that had bones growing the wrong way in his feet which resulted in uncomfortable looking toes and a bad case of bumblefoot/possible infection of the bone, it took months of visiting different vets, being given different meds with no improvement, until we finally learned about the exotic vet, who seemed to notice and know about things none of the others picked up on and put him on some specific medication that had him much better in a few weeks)
Anyway, any other experiences like this with obvious causes / would it better taking him to the vets immediately or keeping an eye on it and maybe going to exotics next week? He's already on metacam as I said, is there anything else we could do similar to other animals like give him an eye bath/give the area a good wipe down with saline solution?
