1 Feed
- Important crisis management resources
- When is improvising necessary?
- Which food group am I replacing with my feeding support?
- How much and how often should I feed and water?
- What can I use that I have already got at home?
- Other possible easily available foods with their pros and cons
- How do I prep a syringe for rougher pellet fibre?
- What can I do without a syringe?
- The role of lukewarm water
2 Probiotics
- Probiotic products explained
- Vitamin C for guinea pigs off all food
- In which ways can I give probiotics?
- Probiotics in combination with antibiotics
- FREE: Live gut microbiome transfer ('Poo Soup')
1 Feed
Important practical and helpful information resources for managing crisis care and seeing a vet
- Support Product overview for ordering online asap
Probiotics & Live Gut Microbiome Transfer ('Poo Soup'); Recovery Formula Foods And Vitamin C: Overview With Product Links and Transfer Recipe
- Things we recommend to have at home or that you can make easily at home in an emergency
First Aid Kit: Easily available non-medication support products for an emergency
- Our full syringe feeding and medicating guide
For videos plus all the practical feeding tips, possible hold pictures for uncooperative piggies, weight monitoring and tailored flaxible feeding support as well as how to spot if your piggy is dying, we recommend our regular, very practical and comprehensive Syringe Feeding and Medicating Guide: All About Syringe Feeding and Medicating Guinea Pigs with Videos and Pictures
- Emergency and practical crisis care information collection
For what to do in an emergency, inclusive helpful information links to safe or unsafe medication and dosage computation when dealing with a vet not experienced with guinea pigs; practical illness and end of life support, we have created a one stop information collection of all you may need to look up: Emergency and Crisis Care as well as Bridging Care until a Vet Appointment
- Guidelines for how urgently I need to see a vet
How Soon Should My Guinea Pig See A Vet? - A Quick Guide
List Of Life And Death Out-of-hours Emergencies
When is improvising necessary?
Since recovery products often have a fairly short use life, it is not necessarily economical to have a pouch at home at all times unless you are looking after a fair number or older/frailer guinea pigs, so it is usually more effective to order online when you really need to.
Some vets may have a pouch of herbivore formula at hand when you see them with your ill piggy but you cannot count on it since it is not a medication.
Sadly, recovery formula powders are not necessarily easily available or available everywhere.
However, guinea pigs cannot wait for days when they lose their appetite. This guide aims to provide all the necessary tips and tricks for what you can do to bridge that gap.
Please get a vet appointment as soon as possible or - if your piggy is really unwell - seek out-of-hours care (wherever possible).
Which food group am I replacing with my feeding support?
What you need to replace is the over three quarters of hay/grass fibre that make the bulk of the daily food intake and not the veg, which together with pellets only fills the supplementary role that wild forage used to have. You cannot judge the hay intake by eye. Just watching your piggy chew on a bit of cud can be very misleading.
Please switch to weighing first thing in the morning on your kitchen scales for best day to day comparison so you get a clear idea of any ongoing weight loss and how much you need to feed over the coming 24 hours - where the weight is going to change according as to how much you are getting in - but that constantly changes - just a large pee can make a difference of 10g.
Not Eating, Weight Loss And The Importance Of Syringe Feeding Fibre
How much and how often do I need to feed a piggy fully off their food and drink?
You are aiming at 60-90 ml in 24 hours with a guinea pig that is not eating at all but as close as 40 ml as you can get in little but frequent feeds with a seriously guinea pig where every syringe full is a major struggle and you may only get 6 ml into them in any session. In this case, aim at a feed every 2 hours during day time and just one feed and check during the night to ensure that you get some sleep in case it drags on.
Keep in mind the more watery a mix is the more overall volume you need to get into your piggies. For this reason it is better to offer water separately after every 3-5 syringes as much as your piggy is accepting. Please never just squirt it in to avoid aspiration.
A piggy can only hold about a third or half of a small syringe in their mouth, a very weak piggy perhaps a tenth (0.1 - 0.3 ml). You have to wait until one lot has gone down before you can give more. Count your feeds on a piece of paper by making a dash for every fibrous syringe load that has gone in on a piece of paper next to you so you can keep track.
A mix of mushed pellets and recovery fare can also help in those cases where a piggy doesn’t like the taste of the formula.
What can I use that I already have at home?
Pellets soaked in a little warm water make a perfectly acceptable substitute for a few days. They do contain at least some proportion of hay fibre (even if it cn be a surprisingly low percentage when you check out the fibre content on the package); uniform pellets for guinea pigs are also usually enriched with vitamin C.
Please aim to make them freshly and not in large batches. Adjust the consistency of the mush so it is as firm as will pass through your syringe. Have another mug with baby warm water handy for rinsing your syringe after every load, or at least every second load.
Other foods for improvising with their pros and cons
If you live in a country where there are only dry mixes (muesli) available, you can soak the formulated bits that will soften (which are mainly empty fillers) or you can look for vegetable purees for babies - which for the short term provides some bulk but neither contains the crucial grass/hay fibre for the which the whole digestive system is laid out for. This is not too much of problem for a few days or a week but it can in the medium to longer term cause added digestive problems in terms of malnutrition.
Rabbit pellets are never enriched with vitamin C; they also have different nutritional needs so while you can use them shortly if there really is nothing else, please stop as soon as possible.
How do I prep a syringe so it will pass rougher pellet fibre?
Please get a needle-free 1 ml syringe from your closest pharmacy or ideally always have some at home. Syringes are one of the item that we strongly recommend to always have to hand; ideally several.
You can use a normal medication syringe but you need to cut off the tip with scissors just below where the syringe widens so the plunger is held in to make allowance that pellet fibres are a lot rougher – and it is exactly that roughage that your piggies need. As long as your piggy is still partially eating on their own, you can let them eat from a bowl outside the cage or from a teaspoon and just top up with the syringe at need.
What if cannot get hold of a syringe quickly?
You can try a small coffee spoon but it can be a lot more tricky to get anything into an uncooperative guinea pig.
The role of lukewarm water
Lukewarm water usually goes down better than cold water; if possible, please use lukewarm water for making up any feeding mush and also to gently syringe a little water in between feeds. Especially when you notice that your piggy is chewing on dryer cud - it helps it to go down better and free up the mouth for more feed.
What warm water cannot replace is any feed. Guinea pigs cannot fast for long (ideally not more than a day - which they not rarely have already done by the time you notice that they are not well and not eating properly. Just watching them nibbling on a little veg can be totally deceiving. Hence the need for this guide here...
2 Probiotics (digestive support)
Probiotics contain inert digestive gut bacteria that are crucial for the digestive process. They are classed as a food supplement and not as a medication. Added probiotics come in handy with digestive problems or with piggies on antibiotics.
Probiotic products explained
Basic
These powders contain encapsulated dormant digestive bacteria; some brands may have added vitamin C, others won't. You need to check the brand. Please be aware that a well kept guinea pig will not develop scurvy in just a few days with less vitamin C.
Small herbivore animal probiotics are widely available in pet shops or online; it frankly doesn’t matter which brand. If you have a piggy with calcium issues, then avipro plus is the brand free of added calcium.
Enhanced
- Fibreplex (UK brand) and bene bac plus (US brand) contain other ingredients that will help with the digestive process and can make a difference in guinea pigs with longer term or recurring problems that will not settle.
- Benebac plus is US based but available in many countries.
Please always check any recovery formula whether they are already enhanced with probitiotics and vitamin C or not - Emeraid products usually are already enhanced.
Vitamin C for guinea pigs off all food
Please don't panic. Vitamin C is in virtually all foods that your guinea pig eats; as long as they eat a little, they will still get some. It is also still in their improvised pellet mush.
Well kept guinea pigs will also not develop scurvy symptoms within just a few days of being off their feed unless you are over-supplementing and their bodies have adjusted to those much higher artificial levels. This usually gives you time to see a vet and to order any necessary illness support products that you will need during a more serious illness/operation recovery. Always check whether other support products are already enriched with vitamin C or not.
In which ways can I give probiotics?
- You can sprinkle the powder on a little veg treat
- Dissolve a pinch in a little water and syringe
- Mix it into your feeding mush so your piggy gets some with every little bit that you get into them in a crisis (my preferred method with piggies totally off their food and fighting feeding)
- Big No No: Do not add it to water bottles as it promotes the quick growth of algae, especially in wamer weather. You can also not control the individual water intake.
This method only works if you have an active strong drinker on long term probiotic support who loves their water this way but you need to clean the water bottle twice instead of just daily in hot weather. But with piggies off their food and drink, this is best avoided because you have no control over the actual intake.
Please never give any medication in the drinking water!
When to best give probiotics in combination with antibiotics?
You can give the powder either 1 hour before any antibiotic or two hours after the antibiotic in order to help counter the effect of them on the gut microbiome – use whichever fits better into your own daily routine. Some antibiotics are a bit harsher on the gut than others but bad reaction can happen to any of them although the vast majority of piggies will tolerate an antibiotic well.
FREE: Live gut microbiome transfer (‘Poo Soup’)
The best of all probiotics is actually free and at hand as long as you have a healthy guinea pig companion, who is not on any antibiotics or other strong medication themselves. It sounds a bit gross but it is actually not as bad as it sounds. Key is that the transfer is made quickly with absolutely fresh poos since the microbiome will die off very quickly.
Put the heathy companion into a clean carrier with a little food of their liking; eating always triggers pooing. Check very regularly.
Once you have 3-7 totally fresh poops, place them into a very small dish with water and leave to soak for few minutes until the water starts discolouring. Immediately pull up 1-3 syringes of the water and give them to the ill piggy. The whole process should not take any longer than 5 minutes between the poo drop (ideally less) to allow live healthy tailor-made guinea pig microbiome to reach the gut while still alive. The quicker you are, the more effective the procedure is. Throw the rest away and clean the dish and the syringe. It only works with the freshest of poops.
Correctly made, ‘poo soup’ can be as or even more effective than any commercial products because it is tailor-made. It also mimics natural 'poop stealing' behaviour in recovering guinea pigs (bum mining their mates). You can give it up to three times daily but always totally freshly made - giving dead microbiome is counterproductive.
You can use 'poo soup' in combination with other conventional probitic products and also enriched emeraid brand recovery formula.
- Important crisis management resources
- When is improvising necessary?
- Which food group am I replacing with my feeding support?
- How much and how often should I feed and water?
- What can I use that I have already got at home?
- Other possible easily available foods with their pros and cons
- How do I prep a syringe for rougher pellet fibre?
- What can I do without a syringe?
- The role of lukewarm water
2 Probiotics
- Probiotic products explained
- Vitamin C for guinea pigs off all food
- In which ways can I give probiotics?
- Probiotics in combination with antibiotics
- FREE: Live gut microbiome transfer ('Poo Soup')
1 Feed
Important practical and helpful information resources for managing crisis care and seeing a vet
- Support Product overview for ordering online asap
Probiotics & Live Gut Microbiome Transfer ('Poo Soup'); Recovery Formula Foods And Vitamin C: Overview With Product Links and Transfer Recipe
- Things we recommend to have at home or that you can make easily at home in an emergency
First Aid Kit: Easily available non-medication support products for an emergency
- Our full syringe feeding and medicating guide
For videos plus all the practical feeding tips, possible hold pictures for uncooperative piggies, weight monitoring and tailored flaxible feeding support as well as how to spot if your piggy is dying, we recommend our regular, very practical and comprehensive Syringe Feeding and Medicating Guide: All About Syringe Feeding and Medicating Guinea Pigs with Videos and Pictures
- Emergency and practical crisis care information collection
For what to do in an emergency, inclusive helpful information links to safe or unsafe medication and dosage computation when dealing with a vet not experienced with guinea pigs; practical illness and end of life support, we have created a one stop information collection of all you may need to look up: Emergency and Crisis Care as well as Bridging Care until a Vet Appointment
- Guidelines for how urgently I need to see a vet
How Soon Should My Guinea Pig See A Vet? - A Quick Guide
List Of Life And Death Out-of-hours Emergencies
When is improvising necessary?
Since recovery products often have a fairly short use life, it is not necessarily economical to have a pouch at home at all times unless you are looking after a fair number or older/frailer guinea pigs, so it is usually more effective to order online when you really need to.
Some vets may have a pouch of herbivore formula at hand when you see them with your ill piggy but you cannot count on it since it is not a medication.
Sadly, recovery formula powders are not necessarily easily available or available everywhere.
However, guinea pigs cannot wait for days when they lose their appetite. This guide aims to provide all the necessary tips and tricks for what you can do to bridge that gap.
Please get a vet appointment as soon as possible or - if your piggy is really unwell - seek out-of-hours care (wherever possible).
Which food group am I replacing with my feeding support?
What you need to replace is the over three quarters of hay/grass fibre that make the bulk of the daily food intake and not the veg, which together with pellets only fills the supplementary role that wild forage used to have. You cannot judge the hay intake by eye. Just watching your piggy chew on a bit of cud can be very misleading.
Please switch to weighing first thing in the morning on your kitchen scales for best day to day comparison so you get a clear idea of any ongoing weight loss and how much you need to feed over the coming 24 hours - where the weight is going to change according as to how much you are getting in - but that constantly changes - just a large pee can make a difference of 10g.
Not Eating, Weight Loss And The Importance Of Syringe Feeding Fibre
How much and how often do I need to feed a piggy fully off their food and drink?
You are aiming at 60-90 ml in 24 hours with a guinea pig that is not eating at all but as close as 40 ml as you can get in little but frequent feeds with a seriously guinea pig where every syringe full is a major struggle and you may only get 6 ml into them in any session. In this case, aim at a feed every 2 hours during day time and just one feed and check during the night to ensure that you get some sleep in case it drags on.
Keep in mind the more watery a mix is the more overall volume you need to get into your piggies. For this reason it is better to offer water separately after every 3-5 syringes as much as your piggy is accepting. Please never just squirt it in to avoid aspiration.
A piggy can only hold about a third or half of a small syringe in their mouth, a very weak piggy perhaps a tenth (0.1 - 0.3 ml). You have to wait until one lot has gone down before you can give more. Count your feeds on a piece of paper by making a dash for every fibrous syringe load that has gone in on a piece of paper next to you so you can keep track.
A mix of mushed pellets and recovery fare can also help in those cases where a piggy doesn’t like the taste of the formula.
What can I use that I already have at home?
Pellets soaked in a little warm water make a perfectly acceptable substitute for a few days. They do contain at least some proportion of hay fibre (even if it cn be a surprisingly low percentage when you check out the fibre content on the package); uniform pellets for guinea pigs are also usually enriched with vitamin C.
Please aim to make them freshly and not in large batches. Adjust the consistency of the mush so it is as firm as will pass through your syringe. Have another mug with baby warm water handy for rinsing your syringe after every load, or at least every second load.
Other foods for improvising with their pros and cons
If you live in a country where there are only dry mixes (muesli) available, you can soak the formulated bits that will soften (which are mainly empty fillers) or you can look for vegetable purees for babies - which for the short term provides some bulk but neither contains the crucial grass/hay fibre for the which the whole digestive system is laid out for. This is not too much of problem for a few days or a week but it can in the medium to longer term cause added digestive problems in terms of malnutrition.
Rabbit pellets are never enriched with vitamin C; they also have different nutritional needs so while you can use them shortly if there really is nothing else, please stop as soon as possible.
How do I prep a syringe so it will pass rougher pellet fibre?
Please get a needle-free 1 ml syringe from your closest pharmacy or ideally always have some at home. Syringes are one of the item that we strongly recommend to always have to hand; ideally several.
You can use a normal medication syringe but you need to cut off the tip with scissors just below where the syringe widens so the plunger is held in to make allowance that pellet fibres are a lot rougher – and it is exactly that roughage that your piggies need. As long as your piggy is still partially eating on their own, you can let them eat from a bowl outside the cage or from a teaspoon and just top up with the syringe at need.
What if cannot get hold of a syringe quickly?
You can try a small coffee spoon but it can be a lot more tricky to get anything into an uncooperative guinea pig.
The role of lukewarm water
Lukewarm water usually goes down better than cold water; if possible, please use lukewarm water for making up any feeding mush and also to gently syringe a little water in between feeds. Especially when you notice that your piggy is chewing on dryer cud - it helps it to go down better and free up the mouth for more feed.
What warm water cannot replace is any feed. Guinea pigs cannot fast for long (ideally not more than a day - which they not rarely have already done by the time you notice that they are not well and not eating properly. Just watching them nibbling on a little veg can be totally deceiving. Hence the need for this guide here...
2 Probiotics (digestive support)
Probiotics contain inert digestive gut bacteria that are crucial for the digestive process. They are classed as a food supplement and not as a medication. Added probiotics come in handy with digestive problems or with piggies on antibiotics.
Probiotic products explained
Basic
These powders contain encapsulated dormant digestive bacteria; some brands may have added vitamin C, others won't. You need to check the brand. Please be aware that a well kept guinea pig will not develop scurvy in just a few days with less vitamin C.
Small herbivore animal probiotics are widely available in pet shops or online; it frankly doesn’t matter which brand. If you have a piggy with calcium issues, then avipro plus is the brand free of added calcium.
Enhanced
- Fibreplex (UK brand) and bene bac plus (US brand) contain other ingredients that will help with the digestive process and can make a difference in guinea pigs with longer term or recurring problems that will not settle.
- Benebac plus is US based but available in many countries.
Please always check any recovery formula whether they are already enhanced with probitiotics and vitamin C or not - Emeraid products usually are already enhanced.
Vitamin C for guinea pigs off all food
Please don't panic. Vitamin C is in virtually all foods that your guinea pig eats; as long as they eat a little, they will still get some. It is also still in their improvised pellet mush.
Well kept guinea pigs will also not develop scurvy symptoms within just a few days of being off their feed unless you are over-supplementing and their bodies have adjusted to those much higher artificial levels. This usually gives you time to see a vet and to order any necessary illness support products that you will need during a more serious illness/operation recovery. Always check whether other support products are already enriched with vitamin C or not.
In which ways can I give probiotics?
- You can sprinkle the powder on a little veg treat
- Dissolve a pinch in a little water and syringe
- Mix it into your feeding mush so your piggy gets some with every little bit that you get into them in a crisis (my preferred method with piggies totally off their food and fighting feeding)
- Big No No: Do not add it to water bottles as it promotes the quick growth of algae, especially in wamer weather. You can also not control the individual water intake.
This method only works if you have an active strong drinker on long term probiotic support who loves their water this way but you need to clean the water bottle twice instead of just daily in hot weather. But with piggies off their food and drink, this is best avoided because you have no control over the actual intake.
Please never give any medication in the drinking water!
When to best give probiotics in combination with antibiotics?
You can give the powder either 1 hour before any antibiotic or two hours after the antibiotic in order to help counter the effect of them on the gut microbiome – use whichever fits better into your own daily routine. Some antibiotics are a bit harsher on the gut than others but bad reaction can happen to any of them although the vast majority of piggies will tolerate an antibiotic well.
FREE: Live gut microbiome transfer (‘Poo Soup’)
The best of all probiotics is actually free and at hand as long as you have a healthy guinea pig companion, who is not on any antibiotics or other strong medication themselves. It sounds a bit gross but it is actually not as bad as it sounds. Key is that the transfer is made quickly with absolutely fresh poos since the microbiome will die off very quickly.
Put the heathy companion into a clean carrier with a little food of their liking; eating always triggers pooing. Check very regularly.
Once you have 3-7 totally fresh poops, place them into a very small dish with water and leave to soak for few minutes until the water starts discolouring. Immediately pull up 1-3 syringes of the water and give them to the ill piggy. The whole process should not take any longer than 5 minutes between the poo drop (ideally less) to allow live healthy tailor-made guinea pig microbiome to reach the gut while still alive. The quicker you are, the more effective the procedure is. Throw the rest away and clean the dish and the syringe. It only works with the freshest of poops.
Correctly made, ‘poo soup’ can be as or even more effective than any commercial products because it is tailor-made. It also mimics natural 'poop stealing' behaviour in recovering guinea pigs (bum mining their mates). You can give it up to three times daily but always totally freshly made - giving dead microbiome is counterproductive.
You can use 'poo soup' in combination with other conventional probitic products and also enriched emeraid brand recovery formula.