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Dental Weight loss, wet chin, baldness

R

RichA

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Hi,

We have 2 male pigs, Arthur and Patch, both 4 years old, Arthur is the picture of good health and weights in at 1400g, his brother isn’t doing as well, Patch was always round the 900g mark but has recently being loosing weight and seems off his food. He has a wet chin with also hair loss from his wet chin to belly.
We took him to the vets a week last Monday as we were very worried, he had dropped to 700g and wasn’t eating although seemed interested in food, just not able to eat it. He has had a GA to check his teeth which we were told we fine, a couple of xrays which were also fine. Came away with metacam for pain, something to loosen the poos after the GA and critical care food, and a bill for £255.

The past week we have been syringe feeding the CC food with a small amount of veg wizzed up to make it more palatable. He absolutely loves it and he is maintaining his weight. To me it seems like he can’t chew properly, he is interested in veg but can’t seem to chew it up and get it down it just ends up being spat out. He does tend to grind his teeth which he didn’t used to.

Really not sure what to do, he is really hungry as he is struggling to eat solids but why?

Considering trying another vets incase it is a problem with his teeth that were missed.

Any ideas or advice would be much appreciated.
 
RichA said:
Hi,

We have 2 male pigs, Arthur and Patch, both 4 years old, Arthur is the picture of good health and weights in at 1400g, his brother isn’t doing as well, Patch was always round the 900g mark but has recently being loosing weight and seems off his food. He has a wet chin with also hair loss from his wet chin to belly.
We took him to the vets a week last Monday as we were very worried, he had dropped to 700g and wasn’t eating although seemed interested in food, just not able to eat it. He has had a GA to check his teeth which we were told we fine, a couple of xrays which were also fine. Came away with metacam for pain, something to loosen the poos after the GA and critical care food, and a bill for £255.

The past week we have been syringe feeding the CC food with a small amount of veg wizzed up to make it more palatable. He absolutely loves it and he is maintaining his weight. To me it seems like he can’t chew properly, he is interested in veg but can’t seem to chew it up and get it down it just ends up being spat out. He does tend to grind his teeth which he didn’t used to.

Really not sure what to do, he is really hungry as he is struggling to eat solids but why?

Considering trying another vets incase it is a problem with his teeth that were missed.

Any ideas or advice would be much appreciated.
Click to expand...

Hi and welcome!

I am very sorry for your problems!

Have your vets checked for a potentially brewing dental root abscess or oral thrush? it very much sounds like their is a chewing problem.
A dental piggy with a chewing problem is generally a very hungry piggy as it is otherwise healthy.

You can also try porridge oats and grated veg and see how that is going down in addition to the timothy based syringe feed, which is covering for the 80% of hay he is not eating.

@furryfriends (TEAS) @Jaycey @Abi_nurse
 
I would recommend Simon Maddock at the Cat and Rabbit Clinic in Northampton if you can get there. He does conscious dentals and treats about 20 piggies a week with dental issues. He is the most experienced piggie dental vet in the Uk, people bring their piggies from all over the country, including me. I travel to see him from Cornwall about every 3 months for conscious dentals for my two piggies and he is very reasonably priced, takes around 10 minutes and no GA, which is fantastic x

the first dental we had with our local vet cost a great deal of money and actually made my boy Ted worse than he was before the GA dental, not all vets have the experience of knowing what’s wrong. Your boy does sound very typical of dental issues, despite your vets comments
 
I can agree with the others; get an appointment with Simon or Kim at the Cat and Rabbit Clinic ASAP! They've worked wonders with one of the rescue pigs, Duke.
It was a bit of a drive for us but I really think without them Duke might not still be here!
 
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