Please Help: Poorly Pig With Diarrhoea?

[NewCavyHan]

So I have a fairly poorly boy at home right now and this is my last attempt at finding help. My poor pig has had very loose soft poo for the last 9 months. Yes 9 months! Now before you think I've been an awful owner and done nothing about this till now I will tell you've I've worked with 2 different vets who seemed to take little interest and treated us more like an annoyance than anything being wrong, and now onto my THIRD vet who is being great and actually taking it seriously but even she is stumped with this one. So ramble over this is his story: Fred is a 2 year old rescue pig, I got him at approx 9months old, he was a perfect happy healthy pig. Then 9 months ago he developed very very loose/soft poo. So I stopped all veg for a week he only had good quality hay and burgess pellets. He dried up and I thought this was the trick. I fed him his normal veg but after 24 hours basically had diarrhoea. Again stopped veg for a few days then began to introduce veg slowly over several weeks trying to work out if perhaps he had an intolerance and I concluded he cannot be fed anything green as this triggers his bad bowels. This is problematic for vit C intake which worries me and also means he cannot go out to grass in the summer, and not fair to put his hutch mate out on his own. He has had 2 thorough worming treatments and been prescribed 2 different types of antibiotics on separate occasions with a few months invetween each treatment. He improved during treatment but as soon as he came off them he was bad again. He is now loosing weight so much I can feel every bone in his spine and his hip bones. I am beyond worried about him it has taken over me life. Anyone ever come across anything like this? Current vet thinks perhaps he has a tiny tumour within the lining of his gut so scanning or X-Ray's may be the next step but really don't want to be him under anaesthetic with him so underweight. Please help..? Thank you.

 

[helen105281]

Hi, welcome to the forum. I'm sorry he is so poorly. I am going to tag @Abi_nurse as she is the most experienced.

I would have suggested Panacur in case of worms or E-Cuniculli but you have done that already. Has his poo ever been tested in a lab? that would be my next suggestion. Also, has your vet considered an oral fungal medication like Itrafungol or Nystatin? Fungal can in some cases affect the gut.

Could your vet carry out a conscious xray? an ulrasound is usually done conscious.

 

[NewCavyHan]

Thanks for replying. Yes I've sent his poo off for thorough lab testing, they tested for everything they could think of but it came back all clear which confused everyone! No one had mentioned fungal medication before I will ask my current vet about this for sure. I also need to take out shares in Fibreplex but this make not a drop of difference on him! I didn't know those could be done awake that has put me at ease thank you

 

[Wiebke]

I am very sorry for your nightmare. It sounds like you and your vets have about every angle covered.
I hope that Abi may have more ideas.

 

[Abi_nurse]

Hello there,

I think I would perhaps agree with your vet I'm afraid, although some cancers of the gut are also not visible, however there are a couple of things you can do or try.
- trying b12 injections (these help with food absorption and may help with squishy poo's)
- trialling probiotics
- ultrasounding his guts but this could be difficult (due to the amount of gas in the guts normally)
- ct scanning him would be better than ultrasounding
- exploratory surgery. We do sometimes do this with cases like this so that you can actually visualise the guts. Sounds very drastic but can actually be very useful and get a diagnosis sometimes.

Hope this helps a little. Sorry that I cannot give you much more help here. The fact that he is losing weight is concerning. Ensure that he has his teeth throughly checked and you can also potentially start some syringe feeding a couple of times a day to try and bulk him out a bit. It may be worthwhile your vet talking some bloods too, this can sometimes show issues up.

Hope he starts to feel better soon.

x