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Suspected Uri?

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BlueBird

BlueBird

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Hi there,

So I got home from work today and heard one of my pigs seems to be making a wheezing/grunting sound. The closest thing I can compare it to is someone trumpeting while blowing their nose but Guinea pig style. I suspect it is URI.

She is otherwise well in herself. Eating and drinking (if fact yesterday she was drinking a bit more than normal which I thought was strange). Her breathing seems fineness no difficulty taking breaths. We've heard the odd sneeze from the cage but just thought it might be down to the hay we've bought from a farm that probably isn't dust extracted. Since I got her I did notice she has a habit of snorting, a very different sound to a sneeze but sadly I haven't managed to catch it on film.

My question is should this be looked at by the emergency vet or our normal vet after work tomorrow. My fella doesn't want the responsibility of taking her alone which means the appointment will be at 5.30 tomorrow earliest.

UPDATE: while typing this the fella got her out to have a look at her and her wheezing seemed to have stopped (or at least gotten very quiet/inconsistent). She was eating fresh hay when the wheezing was happening so perhaps she has a very mild infection and she was gobbling her food a bit. But the vet question still stands. When should I take her?
 
My guinea pig used to have an URI, but I took her to the vet, and she stayed there fir about a month. When she got back, she was still sneezing for a few days, but now she is fine.
You will need to see a small animal vet as soon as possible, before anything gets worse.
 
If she is well within herself, eating and drinking and moving around as usual I would say it could wait til tomorrow. Keep an eye on her, if her symptoms worsen of sound more like a URI then take her sooner x
 
If she shows any signs of breathing difficulty (breathing fast or laboured) then get her seen urgently. Otherwise she should be fine to wait until tomorrow afternoon but keep checking her regularly as respiratory problems get worse very quickly
 
I agree - as long as your girl is fine in herself, you can wait, but see a vet asap out-of-hours if the breathing is getting noticeably worse, she goes off food and/or lethargic. Check on her one or twice during the night if that is possible.
 
Thank you all very much. I thought that was the case but I don't want to be too Blahzay (don't know how to spell that :/) about it. I'm sure everyone says this about their pigs but she is a very special pig and we don't want anything horrible to happen to her. Hearing URI type noises coming off her immediately set off alarm bells even if it is quite possible that she was just too excited about the new hay and eating it a bit too quickly.
 
Hi there. So come back from the vets and wanted some more advice. As it wasn't 100% conclusive.

Belle is fine today. Eating lots of hay, even spotted the odd popcorn. We took her to the vets but unfortunately our original vet who we have seen before and is confident she knows pigs and knows what she is doing wasn't there and we got a new vet. It's hard to tell whether she was new new or just new to the practise. I suspect the later as her English wasn't 100%. In fairness to her though, she took a LONG time listening to Belle's chest and couldn't hear anything wrong so we were told to go home and see if things get worse and try and tape the sounds she was making last night and a little this morning (typically she wasn't making her weird URI type sound at the vets).

My conclusion is she may have had a very mild URI she's already gotten over and/or she was eating her food a bit too quickly and breathing with her mouth open while chewing in order to make that kind of sound. Gobbling I guess.

My question now is do I relax a bit or am I on proper URI watch still like last night?
 
Scribbled28 said:
Hi there. So come back from the vets and wanted some more advice. As it wasn't 100% conclusive.

Belle is fine today. Eating lots of hay, even spotted the odd popcorn. We took her to the vets but unfortunately our original vet who we have seen before and is confident she knows pigs and knows what she is doing wasn't there and we got a new vet. It's hard to tell whether she was new new or just new to the practise. I suspect the later as her English wasn't 100%. In fairness to her though, she took a LONG time listening to Belle's chest and couldn't hear anything wrong so we were told to go home and see if things get worse and try and tape the sounds she was making last night and a little this morning (typically she wasn't making her weird URI type sound at the vets).

My conclusion is she may have had a very mild URI she's already gotten over and/or she was eating her food a bit too quickly and breathing with her mouth open while chewing in order to make that kind of sound. Gobbling I guess.

My question now is do I relax a bit or am I on proper URI watch still like last night?
Click to expand...

I'm no expert but I think you can relax a bit. I'm sure if there was a URI present then the vet would have heard, crackles/wheezing when sounding the chest. If her chest sounds clear and she's not making the noises then just reeellax.
 
Yes, it is reassuring that her chest is clear. Hopefully it will settle now. Pleased everything was ok
 
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