URI's

[Guinea moar dragon]

We had a very tense afternoon yesterday when our beautiful boy started breathing unusually. He was using his whole body everytime he took a breath. We phoned then vets immediately and ended up at the emergency vets as ours was closed.

They have given him Baytril 1.4ml a day for 10 days and get him checked again at day 7. He is 2 years old and weighs 1.3kg the vet recommended mixing baytril with pineapple juice but I'm not so sure. Any advice appreciated x

 

[Piggies&buns]

I’m sorry to hear this

Baytril is bitter (don’t taste it yourself - it’s toxic to humans) and piggies have so many more tastebuds than even we do.
The issue with mixing the dose with another liquid is you are increasing the amount of fluid you have to get your piggy to take. Given their enormous number of tastebuds they will probably still taste the meds anyway, and then if they refuse part way through you haven’t managed to get the whole dose in.
We generally find that you are better off to just give the dose of meds as is and then immediately follow it up with a treat.

Weigh him every morning so you can more closely monitor that he is still eating enough hay to maintain his weight. Baytril can cause a loss of appetite as it affects the good gut bacteria plus not being able to breathe properly can mean they reduce hay intake. Weighing every morning means you are able to step in with any required syringe feeding a recovery feed promptly if weight is lost.

You can also give a probiotic such as pro c or fibreplex (or better still give poop soup/live microbiome transfer from the soaked poops of a healthy companion) to help settle the gut.

I’ve added some guides in below to help further
I hope he is ok

Weight and Weight Loss Explained: BMI, Weighing, Poos and Feeding Support Levels
All About Syringe Feeding and Medicating Guinea Pigs with Videos and Pictures
How to Improvise Feeding Support in an Emergency
Probiotics & Live Gut Microbiome Transfer ('Poo Soup'); Recovery Formula Foods And Vitamin C: Overview With Product Links and Transfer Recipe