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Viciously Loosing Weight.

3 Musketeers

3 Musketeers

Junior Guinea Pig
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My guinea pig, Shadow ( Named by the kids.) Has been viciously loosing weight.

I Took him to the top vet for guinea pigs in my country, she studied him, and found no sickness at all.
She assumed his brothers have been bullying him for a long time now not letting him eat.
She told me to buy a extra bowl, and hide it somewhere,and show shadow,and she also gave me some critical care and told me to feed it to him if things got worse.

So i brought shadow home, and filled the bowl up with his favorite food, which..was also the boys favorite food.

They started viciously attacking shadow, and bet him up pretty badly in his igloo.
I tried so hard to feed him, he would refuse point blank to, so i could not feed him, he'd run off immediately when i brought over the spoon.

I brought him back to the vet, and she said to try mash up his favorite pellets, and hand feed it to him.

I did exactly that, its a messy job, but it seems to be doing the trick, i have bought 3 food bowls now, so hopefully they wont bully.

They have a big cage too, so i dont know whats going on!
But shadow seems to be fine now, he runs around and is pop-corning, he looks alot happier now too, so I'm going to continue with the hand'feeding mushed up pellets.
 
Can I check. What sort of weight loss and over what period? How old is he?
Is Shadow living with a group of boars? If so how old are they all and what size cage are they in? It's likely that a trio or group of boars will at some point fall out and need separating. Have you tried removing him from the group into a cage on his own and seeing if he will eat?
 
He has just been loosing alot of weight generally, (stomach wise, if you get me)
Shadow is about..3 months or older.
I Have 3,all are in a big c&c cage in the shed.
Have tried, dividing half, different cage, nothing has worked as they all start rumbling and trying to bite the bars to get him
The poor boy is petrified.
He hates the pellets I'm giving him, but i think he is slowly starting to eat on his own again.
 
You need to weigh him regularly to work out and monitor any weight loss.

I've had pigs for over 20 years and I can never accurately guess a pigs weight.

Is he now kept separately? If so, and the other two are trying to get at him then you need to move his cage away.

If you have to hand feed him it's best to use a syringe not a spoon. There's a syringe feeding guide on the forum. You can also ask your vet to show you how.
 
I'd definitely separate him from the others. Beating him up so badly suggests they'll never really get on - trios plus of boars often don't sadly!
Keep him indoors with you if you can, so you can monitor his weight very closely and keep up the regular syringe feeding! Hopefully once separated he'll have some space and time to calm down and realise he's safe, and then be more bold as to approach food himself :) Good luck!
 
I think you need to remove him from the others and monitor his weight and food intake.
 
Can't agree enough with whats been said above. It sounds very apparent that the other two pigs will not accept him and it would be kinder to him to move him to a cage away from them so that he can live a happier life. If you have a C&C set up in a shed you might be able to use a table to build upwards having a second C&C above the pair so that he is out of their line of sight
 
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