Some questions:
Can you tell us more about her diet?
Is her weight stable every time you weigh her?
How often are you weighing her?
What has the vet said so far?
How much are you syringe feeding her?
Does she maintain her weight without you feeding her?
They look firm and don’t look too thin.
Light coloured poops generally indicate a drier, lower veg content diet.
Thin poops indicate lack of food (hay) intake.
Short (rather than thin) poops can indicate a gut related pain issue.
Is she displaying any other symptoms? Pain when toileting, pain in general, lethargy etc?
Wiebke's Guide to Poops
Hello - thank you for responding.
Jemima has hay (usually Timothy Hay), Oxbow pellets and fresh vegetables every day. She is still eating all of these things of her own accord with seeming enthusiasm on top of critical care feeds. Currently she is on two critical care feeds per day (10mL each time) with poop soup mixed in. We’ve had some public holidays here lately resulting in a couple of long weekends and that has meant those days I was able to do four feeds per day. She gets two to three grass times outside every week.
Water always provided by bottles but have been adding small bowls of water lately in case that further encourages water intake.
I have been weighing her every day for the last week or so due to this situation. Normally they are weighed when I give them a full home health check every fortnight. I’ll attach a photo of her weight progress. I’m not sure what her weight would do if I stopped feeding her as well as what she is eating herself in case it plummets. Also vets have said continue critical care feeds so that is also why I haven’t stopped to see what her weight does.
There doesn’t seem to be any indication of something wrong apart from the poops. As in, she doesn’t seem to be in pain (they trialled her on pain relief but since stopping that there has been no change to indicate that was helping any pain issue), is fairly active - I would say at a normal level for her. She still enjoys a chin scratch - her favourite!
At the second exotics vet last night they did something called a gram test (?) that indicated she has more bad bacteria in her gut - they noted “Subjectively increased gram negative flora on faecal gram stain cytology (60% gram neg bacteria, 40% gram pos)”. But are awaiting further test results before taking action.
They took blood to do some further blood chemistry and checked her urine with a kidney function test pending.
Tomorrow I pick up the FibrePlex ordered in by the vet to start her on to see if that helps.
I just thought that with contributions of very fresh poop from her cage mates with her critical care that her gut bacteria would have been able to balance by now if that’s what the issue was.
Here is a bit of a timeline of events:
Friday 7 March - diarrhoea
(Shutdown for Cyclone Alfred night - not even emergency vets open all weekend so did a vet video call (general vet - no exotic vets available) and home care.)
Resolved Sunday 9.
Brief recurrence of diarrhoea end of month and spirochetes found faecal test UPV 31 March.
Antibiotics - metronidazole
31 March for 5 days
Poos small and light ever since
Hospitalised overnight 16 April to get intensive critical care feeds and fluids.
Critical care feeds and poo soup since plus rechecks and order of Protexin - only arrived today not got yet.
