skinny piggie

[shannon321]

One of the pigs i look after just will not gain weight!

The vet says he is a little slim and any less she would be worried but he's just on the cusp of being ok. He's fed science selective ad lib, timothy and meadow hay and a selection of veggies most days, his cage mate is only a baby compared to him but he's turned into a right little solid piggie but Tino just doesn't gain any weight.

The vet doesn't know whats wrong, she checked his teeth and weighed him and mentioned the possibilities of kindey problems or diabetes as he does drink a fair amount of water but she wasn't sure and just told me to bring him back in a month to be weighed on the same scale again and if he lost any weight we'd think about blood tests etc.

I thought it would be worth asking on here to see if anyone had any ideas? His coat is healthy and shiney etc but i was wondering if there is a multi vit that could be added to water? My rats get Dr squiggles, is this sutible for pigs?

Thank you.

 

[nutmeg]

I'm sure there will be people coming on who can give some more medical advice than me. But I would say that weighing a guinea pig once a month is definitely not enough when you have concerns about them. You could really do with weighing him daily, or every other day yourself to monitor him closely. He could just be a small pig, but weight monitoring is a good indicator of general health. xx

 

[Gems]

As nutmeg said you must weigh him more regular than that. I've recently taken in two piggies and was weighing them daily for 3 weeks until their weight stabilized and weigh all of my piggies once a week regardless. I syringed critical care and they had normal pellets, hay and fresh food to begin with just to get some weight on them. Things like corn are fattening so you could try him on that ( I know sainsburys was selling whole corn for 30p each last weekend so may still have it available ). I think others have used oats as well ( if you do a quick search you'll probably find threads on it ) as that is also fattening. Does he eat plenty? When you feed them maybe keep an eye on how much he's actually eating. If he's not eating much then it could be indicative of teeth problems and it tends to be the back teeth that are problematic which not all vets check.

Also if your pigs are adult pigs then they will need 50g of mixed fresh food each per day.

Never heard of Dr Squiggles to be honest. You can give him extra vitamin c but if he's getting a good diet he shouldn't really need it

 

[skrikopanik]

In Sweden they often recommend rolled oats to put weight on pigs, maybe worth a try?