Feeding an elderly piggie

avafaghani

avafaghani

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Hello,
My guinea pig Ginny is seven almost eight years old! I am currently at Uni, so my mom has been taking her at my house. I come home for the weekends, and last weekend I noticed she wasn't pooping very much, and she had one very large poop that was softer and had some mucus in it. As soon as I saw this, I was worried that she may not be getting enough nutrients. I give her mostly green leaf lettuce and cucumber as her veggies, a vitamin C supplement via syringe every night, pellets, and of course endless hay. As soon as I saw the lack/soft poo, I gave her some lettuce and rushed to the 24 hour pet store and bought some EmerAid (I usually use critical care but didn't have). I gave her just maybe 3mL I believe of EmerAid and within an hour her poops were totally big, hard, and back to normal. I've been giving her a little bit of EmerAid the last two days since.

Any advice on how long to give the EmerAid, and should I up my veggies for her? I had two piggies pass away from bloat so I'm honestly very scared since she's getting older of reintroducing different veggies again. Please let me know, any advice appreciated.

Please send only positive energy Ms. Ginny's way, she is older!
 
Hay is the most important part of the diet. You need to be sure she is getting enough of it and you do that via the weekly weight checks, switching to daily checks while you have concerns about her.

It doesn’t sound like she gets much variety in her veg (we recommend lettuce, cucumber, bell pepper and cilantro as a daily basis and then there are a multitude of other veggies which can be given in rotation). But you shouldn’t suddenly introduce anything new nor should you suddenly increase quantity.
Doing either of those things will be likely to cause digestive problems.
The daily amount of veg is one cup per day.

Generally speaking-
Lack of poop is not enough hay.
Mucus coated poop is due to having not eaten enough hay.
Soft poop suggests a digestive upset. Again, can be due to not having eaten enough hay.

Soft poops means all veg needs to be removed from the diet until poops go back to normal. You still then need to keep piggy off veg for a further 24-48 hours after they normalise before very slowly reintroducing veg.

She needs the emeraid if she is losing weight each day (50g of weight loss is the point it is officially considered weight loss). Losing weight means she isn’t eating enough hay and the syringe feeding replaces the hay intake.
If she was to be losing weight then you syringe feed for as long as is necessary - and that depends on the underlying cause of the reduction in hay intake (which would require a vet to determine).

Wiebke

Thread 'Wiebke's Guide to Poops'

1 How the Digestive System Works
2 Poo Eating (Coprophagy)
3 Health Monitoring: Weighing vs. Poos Watching
- What does weighing do?
- What does the poop output tell you?
4 Minor Poop Issues
- How to deal with a minor tummy upset
- Funny poops: What do they mean?
- Caked on poops
5 Serious Diarrhoea
6 Impaction
7...
  • Informative
  • Like
Wiebke

Thread 'Long Term Balanced General And Special Needs Guinea Pig Diets'

1 The recommended ratio of food groups
2 Hay and fresh grass
3 Vegetables, fresh herbs and fruit with an illustrated balanced sample diet
4 Special dietary needs
- Urinary tract infections, bladder stones and sterile IC (non-bacterial interstitial cystitis)
- Diabetes and long term digestive problems
- Impaction in boars
- Pregnancy and nursing dietary tweaks (only visible to registered members who have accepted our no intentional breeding policy)...
  • Like

Have you always supplemented her with vit c? I ask because it is never recommended to routinely supplement piggies. They get everything they need from their balanced diet and should not need supplementing at all - you won’t find any long term owners on here who supplement.
You can’t suddenly just stop giving it now though otherwise that can make her ill as her body will be used to abnormally high amounts. If you suddenly stop then the sudden drop in vit c levels which her body has got used to will cause her to suffer with scurvy.
Also As excess vit c is excreted in the urine, as you are giving over and above what her body needs, then simply she is just peeing it back out and wasting your money.

Wiebke

Thread 'Probiotics & Live Gut Microbiome Transfer ('Poo Soup'); Recovery Formula Foods And Vitamin C: Overview With Product Links and Transfer Recipe'

1 Overview of recovery formula foods
- Recommended brands
- Emergency alternatives
2 Probiotics
- Standard brands
- Enhanced probiotics
- Live gut microbiome transfer (poo soup)
3 Vitamin C
- Recommended brand
- Alternatives
- Booster vs. long term supplementation


These chapters have been copied from the complete hand feeding guide with the kind permission of @helen105281...
  • Like
 
Piggies&buns said:
Hay is the most important part of the diet. You need to be sure she is getting enough of it and you do that via the weekly weight checks, switching to daily checks while you have concerns about her.

It doesn’t sound like she gets much variety in her veg (we recommend lettuce, cucumber, bell pepper and cilantro as a daily basis and then there are a multitude of other veggies which can be given in rotation). But you shouldn’t suddenly introduce anything new nor should you suddenly increase quantity.
Doing either of those things will be likely to cause digestive problems.
The daily amount of veg is one cup per day.

Generally speaking-
Lack of poop is not enough hay.
Mucus coated poop is due to having not eaten enough hay.
Soft poop suggests a digestive upset. Again, can be due to not having eaten enough hay.

Soft poops means all veg needs to be removed from the diet until poops go back to normal. You still then need to keep piggy off veg for a further 24-48 hours after they normalise before very slowly reintroducing veg.

She needs the emeraid if she is losing weight each day (50g of weight loss is the point it is officially considered weight loss). Losing weight means she isn’t eating enough hay and the syringe feeding replaces the hay intake.
If she was to be losing weight then you syringe feed for as long as is necessary - and that depends on the underlying cause of the reduction in hay intake (which would require a vet to determine).

Wiebke

Thread 'Wiebke's Guide to Poops'

1 How the Digestive System Works
2 Poo Eating (Coprophagy)
3 Health Monitoring: Weighing vs. Poos Watching
- What does weighing do?
- What does the poop output tell you?
4 Minor Poop Issues
- How to deal with a minor tummy upset
- Funny poops: What do they mean?
- Caked on poops
5 Serious Diarrhoea
6 Impaction
7...
  • Informative
  • Like
Wiebke

Thread 'Long Term Balanced General And Special Needs Guinea Pig Diets'

1 The recommended ratio of food groups
2 Hay and fresh grass
3 Vegetables, fresh herbs and fruit with an illustrated balanced sample diet
4 Special dietary needs
- Urinary tract infections, bladder stones and sterile IC (non-bacterial interstitial cystitis)
- Diabetes and long term digestive problems
- Impaction in boars
- Pregnancy and nursing dietary tweaks (only visible to registered members who have accepted our no intentional breeding policy)...
  • Like

Have you always supplemented her with vit c? I ask because it is never recommended to routinely supplement piggies. They get everything they need from their balanced diet and should not need supplementing at all - you won’t find any long term owners on here who supplement.
You can’t suddenly just stop giving it now though otherwise that can make her ill as her body will be used to abnormally high amounts. If you suddenly stop then the sudden drop in vit c levels which her body has got used to will cause her to suffer with scurvy.
Also As excess vit c is excreted in the urine, as you are giving over and above what her body needs, then simply she is just peeing it back out and wasting your money.

Wiebke

Thread 'Probiotics & Live Gut Microbiome Transfer ('Poo Soup'); Recovery Formula Foods And Vitamin C: Overview With Product Links and Transfer Recipe'

1 Overview of recovery formula foods
- Recommended brands
- Emergency alternatives
2 Probiotics
- Standard brands
- Enhanced probiotics
- Live gut microbiome transfer (poo soup)
3 Vitamin C
- Recommended brand
- Alternatives
- Booster vs. long term supplementation


These chapters have been copied from the complete hand feeding guide with the kind permission of @helen105281...
  • Like
Click to expand...
Thank you so much! I will definitely weigh her and not make any crazy sudden changes. I’ll slowly start reintroducing bell peppers for sure and work our way back up to one cup of veg per day. She used to eat bell peppers all the time!

I’ve heard that the Vitamin C supplements are not needed on the forums, but last year there was a day where Ginny suddenly wasn’t using her back legs at all, and the vet insisted that all guinea pigs need vitamin C and to give it to her (1 mL) everyday. Does it do any harm is my question? Ginny really enjoys the vitamin C liquid and the vet was very adamant that she needs it.
 
avafaghani said:
Thank you so much! I will definitely weigh her and not make any crazy sudden changes. I’ll slowly start reintroducing bell peppers for sure and work our way back up to one cup of veg per day. She used to eat bell peppers all the time!

I’ve heard that the Vitamin C supplements are not needed on the forums, but last year there was a day where Ginny suddenly wasn’t using her back legs at all, and the vet insisted that all guinea pigs need vitamin C and to give it to her (1 mL) everyday. Does it do any harm is my question? Ginny really enjoys the vitamin C liquid and the vet was very adamant that she needs it.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately we do see a lot of US members advised to give vit c, but is poor advice. They simply do not need any additional vitamin c at all if their diet is a good balanced one.
You will not find any long term owners or members of this forum who ever supplement.
We simply do not see cases of scurvy in well kept piggies. The cases of scurvy we do see (about one a year on the forum) tend to be in piggies who have been supplemented with vitamin c (or in rescue neglect cases where they have been fed an incorrect diet).

Sudden back leg paralysis (known as overnight paralysis) is caused by a sudden drop in calcium. This is a temporary issue which corrects itself. It is not an issue with vitamin c. Therefore if what Ginny had was overnight paralysis, then she did not ever need the supplementary vit c.

Yes it can do harm if the levels she has become used to drop at all - it can cause her to get scurvy. Not because of lack of vit c (which is what scurvy is - a vit c deficiency) but because the body has got so used to getting a higher amounts than the body actually needs.
You either need to continue giving vit c at the same level for the rest of her life or you need to correct her diet, slowly give her more variety in her diet and then incredibly slowly and very carefully wean her off of the vit c supplementation.

To be honest, given her age and if she is struggling with soft mucus poops then at this point I would not do anything other than stabilise her. Make sure her weight is stable and that is indeed eating enough hay before you change anything. She may need veg completely removed from her diet for now to get her gut to stabilise if she is having a digestive upset.
You can’t increase veg or add new veg if she is not eating enough hay and has a dodgy tummy as that could simply make everything worse.
 
Piggies&buns said:
Unfortunately we do see a lot of US members advised to give vit c, but is poor advice. They simply do not need any additional vitamin c at all if their diet is a good balanced one.
You will not find any long term owners or members of this forum who ever supplement.
We simply do not see cases of scurvy in well kept piggies. The cases of scurvy we do see (about one a year on the forum) tend to be in piggies who have been supplemented with vitamin c (or in rescue neglect cases where they have been fed an incorrect diet).

Sudden back leg paralysis (known as overnight paralysis) is caused by a sudden drop in calcium. This is a temporary issue which corrects itself. It is not an issue with vitamin c. Therefore if what Ginny had was overnight paralysis, then she did not ever need the supplementary vit c.

Yes it can do harm if the levels she has become used to drop at all - it can cause her to get scurvy. Not because of lack of vit c (which is what scurvy is - a vit c deficiency) but because the body has got so used to getting a higher amounts than the body actually needs.
You either need to continue giving vit c at the same level for the rest of her life or you need to correct her diet, slowly give her more variety in her diet and then incredibly slowly and very carefully wean her off of the vit c supplementation.

To be honest, given her age and if she is struggling with soft mucus poops then at this point I would not do anything other than stabilise her. Make sure her weight is stable and that is indeed eating enough hay before you change anything. She may need veg completely removed from her diet for now to get her gut to stabilise if she is having a digestive upset.
You can’t increase veg or add new veg if she is not eating enough hay and has a dodgy tummy as that could simply make everything worse.
Click to expand...

Thank you so much!
Something important I forgot to mention: Ginny for almost her whole life has really only eaten the part of hay with the seed like texture? I’m not sure how to explain it but the parts where the tops have some grainy wheat looking parts on them. She has never loved the typical straw parts of hay at all. I have to replenish her hay constantly to make sure there’s enough “seeds” that she’ll eat. What does this mean?
Thankfully she only had one soft poo with mucus and her poops have been very good and normal since. I think I will slowly start to reintroduce more veg, but very very slowly. She’s eating a lot of hay but I’ll tell my mom to weigh her this week until I get back this weekend.
 
I’m sure you know what i’m talking about but I put a photo and circled what Ginny will mostly eat just to be clear
 

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Yes picking out the seed heads first is rather a favourite part of the hay for most piggies. They still eat the rest of the hay though as there aren’t usually enough seed heads to sustain their hay intake needs.

Hay intake cannot be gauged by eye so the weight checks are very important. They are done weekly as routine throughout their life but daily during health concerns
 
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