Bladder stone piggy diet

[Pigglemama]

After Muffin’s bladder stone surgery a week ago I am putting him on a careful diet. This means no grass time as our lawn is full of clover - this breaks my heart as he adores the grass but I am currently growing grass in trays. I have switched to no grain pellets and give just half a tablespoon alongside a urinary support cookie. He has ( and always has had filtered water)
I have been using the Guinea Lynx calcium phosphorus calculator and his daily veggie ratio of calc to phos is 1.35 with an overall calcium of 31.6g. Is this still too high in calcium? I am honestly baffled with it all? The exotic vet recommended a human diet supplement ( I’ve attached a pic) as research has shown it can limit calcium absorption but I’m not keen on doing this is it is still early days with testing it and I don’t want Muffin to be a Guinea pig for it . Has anyone got any advice? Thank you in advance x

 

[Piggies&buns]

We don’t tend to advise the use of calcium/ Phosphorous ratios and calculators because they do not cover the diet as a whole and are therefore inaccurate. As you have said it’s only calculating the veg portion of the diet which is just 15% of the daily food intake. Water, pellets and even hay (and the soil it is grown in has an effect on the nutrient levels of the hay) are not even considered in it so you’ve got 85% of the diet (plus drinking water) unaccounted for.

The best thing is to follow the forum guide -
Lettuce, cucumber, coriander and bell pepper as daily veg. Limit pellets as you already are and filter drinking water.
Feed plenty of veg and encourage lots of fluid intake to keep the bladder flushing through.

Personally I would not think I’d be comfortable to use supplements to further limit absorption of calcium. The issue is, for a piggy, a diet too low in calcium is just as bad as a diet which is too high and can also lead to bladder problems. So if you have a piggy on a low calcium diet and then give supplements to further reduce absorption, to me, it could run the risk of meaning they then are not getting enough. I don’t know, just thinking out loud with this.

 

[Pigglemama]

We don’t tend to advise the use of calcium/ Phosphorous ratios and calculators because they do not cover the diet as a whole and are therefore inaccurate. As you have said it’s only calculating the veg portion of the diet which is just 15% of the daily food intake. Water, pellets and even hay (and the soil it is grown in has an effect on the nutrient levels of the hay) are not even considered in it so you’ve got 85% of the diet (plus drinking water) unaccounted for.

The best thing is to follow the forum guide -
Lettuce, cucumber, coriander and bell pepper as daily veg. Limit pellets as you already are and filter drinking water.
Feed plenty of veg and encourage lots of fluid intake to keep the bladder flushing through.

Personally I would not think I’d be comfortable to use supplements to further limit absorption of calcium. The issue is, for a piggy, a diet too low in calcium is just as bad as a diet which is too high and can also lead to bladder problems. So if you have a piggy on a low calcium diet and then give supplements to further reduce absorption, to me, it could run the risk of meaning they then are not getting enough. I don’t know, just thinking out loud with this.

That makes sense. You mentioned lettuce , coriander, cucumber and bell pepper so feed those four everyday? Sorry if I’ve misinterpreted!

 

[Piggies&buns]

That makes sense. You mentioned lettuce , coriander, cucumber and bell pepper so feed those four everyday? Sorry if I’ve misinterpreted!

Yes they are the four safe daily veggies - A good mix of nutrients and fluid for without being high in calcium.
Those four veg are really all my lot get (they are not bladder pigs). Occasionally they get something else added in but it’s not often l.

 

[Pigglemama]

Yes they are the four safe daily veggies - A good mix of nutrients and fluid for without being high in calcium.
Those four veg are really all my lot get (they are not bladder pigs). Occasionally they get something else added in but it’s not often l.

Thank you- what lettuce do you tend to give?

 

[Piggies&buns]

Thank you- what lettuce do you tend to give?

Any lettuce except iceberg is fine.
I usually buy little gem or round lettuce for them but sometimes the bags of mixed leaves.

 

[Free Ranger]

Not iceberg. But romaine-types of lettuce are recommended, and I also give little gem or what some people call 'butterhead'... your traditional floppy lettuce!

I think if you're giving soft water and being careful with pellets these are the main things. My pigs who've had stones in the past were not as old as my George when they occurred and - at least in my girls case - they didn't recur when I made these changes. At that time I wasn't filtering our water and I have since increased the number of water bottles and re-sited them with spouts close to the bedroom doors so they could drink when they liked and hide while they drank. Some pigs have been open guzzlers - some have been shyer sippers. It wasn't something that occurred to me at that time though. That was when I started checking out the piggy pee puddles for dried calcium deposits as a first red flag.

I had to make some hard decisions for George - having eaten what he liked for his first 5 1/2 years he was heartbroken to be on a reduced diet and would sniff the girls faces. Of course they'd always eaten the same things as him (in Louise's case a lot more of everything!) and had no bladder trouble at all. I never dropped his grass off (we go out to pick it for them) and he got extra water from a syringe but that's because he wanted it - when he got his stone he'd come over expecting it. So we decided that as well as the basics outlined above the odd spinach leaf or dandelion leaf or bit of carrot was worth it for him to have happier days. He still had a few pellets in the evenings too. Not everyone will make the same choices and every pig is different. When he had the big stone out in Jan (when he was finally over all his UTI trouble) he was on lettuce cuc and pepper only for the first week but I'd bet my bottom dollar that's when his next one formed. Just something about the way he sat and lay. The problem is we couldn't run the same situation with two George's to compare. I considered his age and his quality of life but down in my gut I decided that whatever George's issue was his diet wouldn't cure him, so we didn't go spartan. Saying that I do think that if I'd have gone mad with the brassicas he'd have been rather worse off because he would have happily eaten his bodyweight in cabbage-y things!

 

[Pigglemama]

Not iceberg. But romaine-types of lettuce are recommended, and I also give little gem or what some people call 'butterhead'... your traditional floppy lettuce!

I think if you're giving soft water and being careful with pellets these are the main things. My pigs who've had stones in the past were not as old as my George when they occurred and - at least in my girls case - they didn't recur when I made these changes. At that time I wasn't filtering our water and I have since increased the number of water bottles and re-sited them with spouts close to the bedroom doors so they could drink when they liked and hide while they drank. Some pigs have been open guzzlers - some have been shyer sippers. It wasn't something that occurred to me at that time though. That was when I started checking out the piggy pee puddles for dried calcium deposits as a first red flag.

I had to make some hard decisions for George - having eaten what he liked for his first 5 1/2 years he was heartbroken to be on a reduced diet and would sniff the girls faces. Of course they'd always eaten the same things as him (in Louise's case a lot more of everything!) and had no bladder trouble at all. I never dropped his grass off (we go out to pick it for them) and he got extra water from a syringe but that's because he wanted it - when he got his stone he'd come over expecting it. So we decided that as well as the basics outlined above the odd spinach leaf or dandelion leaf or bit of carrot was worth it for him to have happier days. He still had a few pellets in the evenings too. Not everyone will make the same choices and every pig is different. When he had the big stone out in Jan (when he was finally over all his UTI trouble) he was on lettuce cuc and pepper only for the first week but I'd bet my bottom dollar that's when his next one formed. Just something about the way he sat and lay. The problem is we couldn't run the same situation with two George's to compare. I considered his age and his quality of life but down in my gut I decided that whatever George's issue was his diet wouldn't cure him, so we didn't go spartan. Saying that I do think that if I'd have gone mad with the brassicas he'd have been rather worse off because he would have happily eaten his bodyweight in cabbage-y things!

George sounded like an absolute character- just bless him. My vet thinks it’s mainly genetics but I guess we have to help whichever way we can. I put my two on the grass today as they still need a life and it was a lovely day. I just chose a less ‘clovery ‘ bit. x