Hi, my guinea pig has been coughing alot after giving pellets recently. I fed pellets and came back into the room and she was choking for a minute. I use a snuffle mat because she is a very fast eater but she has been coughing a ton for the past 5 minutes. Is it from eating or something else. She had a uri about 5 months ago but was treated and the coughing hasn’t started until yesterday. usually when she eats it will be like one small cough but these sound bad.
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coughing
- Thread starter csojka
- Start date
Hi
This kind of reflexive coughing is the way the body works anything out tht has gone down the wrong way. Some piggies are naturally very greedy eaters that can also swallow a lot of air, which is another course of coughing or hiccups.
Would you consider replacing pellets with fresh or dried forage? Pellets are the one part of the diet that is actually not needed if you replace with other foods from the supplementary group - fresh veg, fresh and dry forage or pellets plus any treats.
What you cannot change is unlimited hay and fresh grass which should make over 80% of the daily food intake because that is what the teeth and digestion are laid out for. Everything else only replaces the supplementary role that wild forage used to have in the grass based diet guinea pigs have evolved on.