Pat Shields
Adult Guinea Pig
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2011
- Messages
- 1,151
- Reaction score
- 50
- Points
- 425
- Location
- USA MO, Ft. Leonard Wood area
Well, folks, we know how conditions can change for the worse suddenly in these little prey animals, but you all just might have helped me rescue another guinea piggie, let's keep our fingers crossed, Sal might make it after all.
I went to check little Salvatore, and he is different this morning. He does not look like an animal at death's door. He had sloshed the water, and he had obviously been rooting through the food I have provided. There was a pile of poopies at the front of the cage as well, and the washcloth in which he has been nestling smells of urine.
I fed him more puréed carrots with an eyedropper, and this time he ate them, so the suggestion of buying baby food was exactly the right thing.
Because of the tartness this could not have been pleasant, but I mixed up more purified water with some more vitamin C powder and put that into his mouth and he swallowed it. I really do believe that one thing has done more to perk him up than anything else but the supplemental heat. I am going to see if I can find a photo of an animal suffering from scurvy to compare; this might be his main problem if the vitamin C perks him up that quickly. So crushing the vitC tabs and mixing the water was also a wonderful idea, thank you. I'm not going to overdo this as I don't want to give him any sores from the acid.
He does not appear to be familiar with eating fresh vegetables and grasses. That makes me feel sad because I know I just can't sit down and explain it to him. Eating nothing but the dry pellets (and I think he is doing that now) and drinking very little water makes him produce these tiny, pathetic, dry, brown little poops, whereas Redemption's are big, green, moist, and voluminous. (Red goes through a 2-pound bag of carrots every 5 days!) THIS is making me more upset the more I think about it, because it means this poor little guinea pig, however old he is, was just kept in some kind of box to run around in day after day being fed nothing but stale pellets in which the vitamin C had deteriorated, being bullied by bigger pigs, with no intervention. grrrr How can people not care about something they are holding captive and at their mercy? grrrr
I don't have access to Critical Care; I'll have to order it from some place on the Internet.
I went to check little Salvatore, and he is different this morning. He does not look like an animal at death's door. He had sloshed the water, and he had obviously been rooting through the food I have provided. There was a pile of poopies at the front of the cage as well, and the washcloth in which he has been nestling smells of urine.
I fed him more puréed carrots with an eyedropper, and this time he ate them, so the suggestion of buying baby food was exactly the right thing.
Because of the tartness this could not have been pleasant, but I mixed up more purified water with some more vitamin C powder and put that into his mouth and he swallowed it. I really do believe that one thing has done more to perk him up than anything else but the supplemental heat. I am going to see if I can find a photo of an animal suffering from scurvy to compare; this might be his main problem if the vitamin C perks him up that quickly. So crushing the vitC tabs and mixing the water was also a wonderful idea, thank you. I'm not going to overdo this as I don't want to give him any sores from the acid.
He does not appear to be familiar with eating fresh vegetables and grasses. That makes me feel sad because I know I just can't sit down and explain it to him. Eating nothing but the dry pellets (and I think he is doing that now) and drinking very little water makes him produce these tiny, pathetic, dry, brown little poops, whereas Redemption's are big, green, moist, and voluminous. (Red goes through a 2-pound bag of carrots every 5 days!) THIS is making me more upset the more I think about it, because it means this poor little guinea pig, however old he is, was just kept in some kind of box to run around in day after day being fed nothing but stale pellets in which the vitamin C had deteriorated, being bullied by bigger pigs, with no intervention. grrrr How can people not care about something they are holding captive and at their mercy? grrrr
I don't have access to Critical Care; I'll have to order it from some place on the Internet.
