Greens or no greens....

[Dabudesu]

Hello All,

We are new guinea pig owners and need some advice please...

We have 2 male guinea pigs, Benny and John. Benny is the uncle, John the nephew.

On Tuesday the 30th march, John (7 months old) did 2 very pink wees. We kept a close eye on him and noticed he squeaked when weeing, so yesterday (thursday) it was off to the vets we went with a sample of wee. The vet tested the wee (not pink any more) and said it had blood in, was alkaline and was a UTI. He gave John a shot of Baytrill and has told us to come back tomorrow (saturday)for another shot. Then he said not to feed John any greens - stick to hay and nuggets. Also if we can give him some vit c, that would help.

Having read all the info on diets in this forum, my question is this - should we cut out the greens completely? He loves his greens and I think he gets a lot of his water from them (we don't know how much water he drinks otherwise).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Also, anything else we can do to help him would be good to know!

 

[HeatherW]

I'm no expert, so will leave it to other more experienced members to confirm. However, if the UTI is caused by a build-up of calcium (i.e. possible stone or bladder sludge), you can reduce the amount they ingest by giving them filtered water and switching to grain-free pellets; that's where they mostly get their calcium intake from. I may be getting my wires crossed with UTIs and bladder sludge though!

In terms of greens, certain veggies contain more calcium than others and should only be fed once or twice a week, like kale and spinach. If your vet specifically said greens and not veggies, then I imagine that's what they meant. You can still give them vitamin C by feeding them bell pepper and cucumber rather than adding vit C drops to the water.

As I said, I'm not an expert though. A more knowledgeable member should be able to assist shortly.

 

[Dabudesu]

Thanks Heather, we are thinking along the same lines. Our water isn't too hard, but we have been out and bought a brita water filter today.

Another thing whilst I think of it:
The vet mentioned human vit c tablets, Would they be ok?

 

[Piggies&buns]

UTI is caused by bacteria, not to do with calcium in veg, filtered water or pellets (calcium - stones and sludge).
If stones were found to be the cause of the blood, then long term alterations of the diet can then be considered, but it’s not the same when it’s a UTI

Normally a UTI is treated with a course of antibiotics which you give orally at home for as long as necessary to treat the infection. I’ve not heard of it being treated by just two baytril injections?

Oral baytril can sometimes cause a digestive upset which can be rectified by syringe feeding if the appetite is affected, potentially staying off veg if soft poops occur and giving a probiotic to help settle the tummy. I cannot think of any reason why an antibiotic injection and staying off veg would be connected at all.

Is your vet listed on our vet locator as being cavy savvy?
Vet Locator

They drink to their needs so if a piggy does have to be off veg they will likely just drink more from a bottle to replace what they aren’t getting from their veg.

 

[Piggies&buns]

If youre dealing with sludge/stones then long term changes to the diet are required to lower the calcium intake. However, diet changes do not do anything to deal with any stones which are already present - surgical removal of any stones is usually necessary. Boars cannot pass them quite as easily as sows as boars have a nook in their urethra where stones can get stuck resulting in a potential emergency situation.
Diet changes takes several weeks to have an effect on the calcium in the system and are the only thing we can do as owners to reduce the calcium - there is also a genetic factor for piggies prone to stones but of course we can do nothing about that.
Pellets and unfiltered drinking water contain more calcium than the highest calcium veg so keeping pellets limited to one tablespoon and ensuring water is filtered goes a long way to reducing calcium intake. Veg wise, it doesn’t need to be cut out completely in such a situation, in fact keeping a wet diet can keep the bladder flushed through which is obviously a good thing, but ensuring high calcium veg such as kale, parsley and spinach is either cut out or kept limited to a small amount once per week only.

 

[Free Ranger]

I have given human vit C tablet to a long-term poorly piggy before but I can't remember the dose... I definitely had to cut up the little pill and then grind the portion to powder. It was mixed into the syringe recovery food she was having at the time. However, I've had a few UTI pigs before and have never bothered with the vit C as they haven't been off their food and there is vit C present in hay and grass (and the nuggets are usually fortified too). Bell pepper is a good one - high vit C, low calcium, plenty of water content. Cucumber is also nice and watery. Some people talk about putting vit C into the water bottle - we don't recommend putting anything at all into the water bottle except water as anything which changes the taste can cause them to drink less.

I think guinea pig urine is usually alkaline so that wouldn't be unusual. John is young to have formed stones which we have seen a few of, but always in older pigs (3+) so hopefully this is just a bad-luck UTI. But generally if you take a piggy to the vet who finds peeing painful and who's wee is blood-tinged they first consider UTI and/or calcium stones (the most common type in piggies) so they might just be giving you all the advice at once without finding out which one! Encourage drinking as much low calcium water as possible. I have cage/run combos and the cage part has a covered area on each side... so I have a water bottle on each side with the food bowl between. That means the pig can hide while they are drinking if they want to, and if they need a drink at night they don't have to come out into the open. Keep an eye on the pee patches. Guinea pigs naturally excrete excess calcium in their urine rather than the poops so a light powdery deposit is not unusual but if it is thick and sludgy you need to redouble your efforts to encourage drinking and reducing pellets (we did this slowly so as not to cause squabbling!) If you can keep everything flushing through it greatly reduces the chances of sludge build-up (which slows the flow) and then stone formation.

The boar in the pic is George. When he was 3 he got a UTI seemingly out of the blue. He was stressed at the time as his cage mate was ill and he got bunged up and started to have trouble pooping. He used to enjoy lying in a nest of his own 'makings' and I suspect that was the cause of his trouble! He had 5 days of oral baytril and some painkiller (metacam or loxicom... it's the same thing, he had it twice a day) and he was sorted. No trouble since but I keep an eye on him as some older boars can get impacted and he's one of them. I check round his bum and his boar bits to make sure he's clean (Boar Care: Bits, Bums & Baths) and so far he always is: he's neutered and doesn't have anything dragging around on the ground if you know what I mean! George has since discovered he likes fleece tunnels which are much easier to empty the poops out of - straight into the bin every day!

If your vet hasn't offered a painkiller it's possible they've not got much piggy experience. It would be worth phoning around vets locally to gauge prices for a consult and try to assess whether they treat a lot of pigs. There is a vet locator above but of course there are plenty of other vets that are just fine. A good tip is to find a piggy rescue near you and phone to see which vet they use because they'll see loads of them! There are a few members up in the north west so they might have some suggestions too. We've not had baytril injections before but methods change all the time so as long as it works... but if it doesn't there are other antibiotic options. With oral antibiotics it can take 2 or 3 days for them to kick in but I don't know about injections. Keep us updated - good luck little John!

 

[Dabudesu]

Thanks all for the advice. Still monitoring... John is still eeking when he wees, but is much more chipper. Lots of popcorns and zooming. We've got another appointment today for a follow up.

We have cut down the nuggets. The bag recommended 50g per pig, we have cut it to 1 tbsp in the am, 1 in the pm. We will cut back again once they have got used to this much. We gave him cucumber, celery, pepper and spring green, and will stick with this for John.

Further updates will follow as things develop.

 

[Bill & Ted]

Hello and welcome to the forum
Hope John’s appointment at the vets goes well for him today x

 

[Wiebke]

Hello All,

We are new guinea pig owners and need some advice please...

We have 2 male guinea pigs, Benny and John. Benny is the uncle, John the nephew.

On Tuesday the 30th march, John (7 months old) did 2 very pink wees. We kept a close eye on him and noticed he squeaked when weeing, so yesterday (thursday) it was off to the vets we went with a sample of wee. The vet tested the wee (not pink any more) and said it had blood in, was alkaline and was a UTI. He gave John a shot of Baytrill and has told us to come back tomorrow (saturday)for another shot. Then he said not to feed John any greens - stick to hay and nuggets. Also if we can give him some vit c, that would help.

Having read all the info on diets in this forum, my question is this - should we cut out the greens completely? He loves his greens and I think he gets a lot of his water from them (we don't know how much water he drinks otherwise).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Also, anything else we can do to help him would be good to know!

Hi!

Unless you are dealing with a bladder stone/sludge, please keep on the greens. They do fill an important niche in the diet (including providing vitamin C and more importantly, magnesium).
Bacterial urine infections, which are most often caused when faecal bacteria in the urinary tract (picked up when scent marking) come together with a lowering of the immune system; at this time of the year commonly with a chill and/or dampness.
Regular cage cleaning and poo patrol is a much better measure to take.

As long as you are still feeding fresh herbs, peppers, a little fresh growing grass (which is very high in vitamin C and the reason why guinea pigs never had the need to make their own in the first place), pellets etc., your piggies still get plenty of vitamin C but if you really wish to, you can give them a 2 weeks booster course of extra vitamin C if it makes you feel better. From what you are reporting, the UTI is on the mild side.

Please be careful about the current weather swings (especially with outdoors piggies) and that the ground is warm and dry to your naked feet for at least 5 minutes before putting your piggies outside. UTIs are very common at this time of year when the nights are still freezing and indoors piggies are not yet hardened off/put on the lawn too early or for too long.
Feeding Grass And Preparing Your Piggies For Lawn Time

 

[Dabudesu]

Hello Wiebke,

Thanks for your kind words and advice.

As we are quite inexperienced, we aren't sure what problem we are dealing with. John has always had quite white wee, and when I was collecting wee samples for the vet, I spotted a couple of tiny pieces of white material. I'm not sure if it was sludge/bits of stone or not.

They are indoor pigs, and we haven't put them outdoors yet as it seems a bit cold still. The C and C cage has guineadad fleeces in. We poo sweep 2 or 3 time a day. The fleeces are changed twice a week.

Hopefully we have caught the problem early and can get it sorted!

Thanks again to everyone for their best wishes and advice.

 

[Piggies&buns]

White wee is normal as that is how they excrete excess calcium but seeing gritty bits in it is not what you want to see.
Please do just cut the pellets down to one tablespoon per day - either feed them half a tablespoon twice a day or one tablespoon once per day. They contribute a lot of calcium to the diet. The bags usually recommend a lot more than is necessary. One tablespoon, when I have weighed out one tablespoon Comes to just 6-10g (depending on brand).

 

[Dabudesu]

Hello all, a quick update on John. He had a course of antibiotics and now seems to be back to his old self, bugging his uncle and chatting away to himself. We have had a slight change of diet - far fewer nuggets, low calcium veg, and filtered water (we don't drink the filtered water ourselves, we bought a water filter just for them...!).
We will keep an eye on him and hope it was just one of those things. Thanks for all the advice!