Special diet help

[Sarah182]

Hi,

I'm new to this whole forum thing so apologies if I'm posting in the wrong place or anything.

We rescued a lovely boy, Pongo, just over a week ago and unfortunately subsequently found out he had a significant kidney stone.
He went for surgery and had the kidney removed and is now recovering.
We're trying to get our head around his new dietary needs and it's a learning curve for sure. We've seen tonnes of advice saying their nuggets should be 0.3% calcium but can't find any that are actually that low (the lowest we've found is either 0.5% or 0.3-0.8 which obviously means they fluctuate which is no good) their normal food is 0.6%.
We're also concerned because he's underweight so needs to bulk up a bit but most of the fresh food that's low calcium seems low calorie too (or high sugar so they can't have too much). Usually for underweight guys we'd supplement with some alfalfa but need to avoid that because of the calcium content too.

He had a bad couple of years before coming to us and his remaining kidney already has some sediment in so we just want him to be as strong as possible so that he can live out whatever time he has left (hopefully lots!) as happily and healthily as possible.

Do you wonderful people have any advice?

Thanks

 

[My Piggies]

Hello and welcome

I'm sorry your boy Pongo has kidney issues. I don't have much experience with this, but maybe instead of trying to find really low calcium pellets, you could just limit them? Pellets should be limited to one tablespoon per piggy per day.

This is a helpful chart created by one of our lovely members:
Nugget Comparison Chart

And this is our diet guide:
Long Term Balanced General And Special Needs Guinea Pig Diets

Hope this helps!

 

[Sarah182]

Thank you
They already have limited nuggets, we've owned piggies for years so have a good grip on the usual stuff, we're just so desperately wanting to do the absolute best for him so hoping to get him the maximum nutritional value for the minimum calcium intake as he really can't afford to take in much at all.

I'll take a look at the threads and see if I can fathom it all out.

 

[h.h.lovecraft]

Hi! One of my piggies has trouble with calcium so I figured I would just write what I feed my pair. They get one scant tablespoon of Versele Laga pellets each in the morning. Any low calcium, low/no grain pellet would work, these are the best I could find in my country and my pigs absolutely love them. They also get around 100 grams (50 grams each) of cucumber, romaine lettuce, and (usually green) bell pepper daily in the evening and unlimited meadow hay all day. I water down the lettuce a bit because I feel like the extra water intake helps flush the system and prevent too much excess calcium or bladder sludge. They get different fruits, vegetables, and herbs occasionally. There are a few other low calcium veggies/herbs you can try to give daily, but my girls are picky and usually happily prefer their staple vegetables. My girls are both very healthy, very good weights and all of the calcium/urinary issues they had when I got them have gone away. Some people stop giving pellets completely which can help a lot since even low calcium pellets are high in calcium compared to veggies. Providing filtered or low calcium water is a very common tip as well, especially if you live in a hard water area. Hope this helps!

 

[Merab]

Welcome to the forum.
I don’t have experience of this to be able to offer advice.
I just wanted to say that Pongo sounds very lucky to have found such a caring owner.
Holding you in my thoughts