1 What is impaction?
- Potential causes
- Why the need for a vet check
- Diet advice
2 Impaction care videos
- How to check for impaction
- How to remove impaction
- Before and after impaction care
3 An impaction carer's practical experiences and tips
- Diagnosing an impaction (description)
- Treating impaction in the short term
- Treating Impaction in the long term
- More practical care tips
1 What is impaction?
Impaction is a degenerative condition that affects about 10% of ageing boars. They increasingly struggle to express the poo mass that collects in the perianal sac between the descended testicles as the musculature at their back end gradually weakens. Boars with impaction typically also lose the spring in their back legs.
The condition is rare in younger boars and thankfully only very rarely a neutering complication but malnutrional impaction can affect younger adults as well.
Impaction is unfortunately very smelly. Mild cases can range from needing removing every few days to the very severe that need clearing out several times daily. Dietary measures can milder cases temporarily stop or slow down impaction; they can in combination with regular exercise also help boars affected by an unsuitable diet and cramped conditions but they cannot cure a genetically determined degeneration or other progressive health factors causing or contributing to impaction.
Neutered boars can also be affected by impaction but because their perianal sac has contracted again after the removal of the testicles, the impaction mass is only about chickpea-sized and can in milder cases be pushed out on its own or very easily removed by the owner.
Possible causes for impaction
Why the need for a vet check?
Please always have your boar vet checked promptly when you suspect impaction!
Here are some reasons why it is is important to make sure that you are actually dealing with impaction and whether the impaction could be caused by other health issues in play:
Diet advice
A good hay-based diet goes a long way towards minimising the risk and severity of impaction.
2 Impaction care videos: How to remove impaction with due care
Warning: The following videos have some graphic scenes depicting Impaction.
How to check for impaction
(Video with permission of Worthing Guinea Pig Rescue)
How to remove Impaction
Before and After
(The latter two videos are reproduced with the kind permission of Guinea Pigs Today)
- Potential causes
- Why the need for a vet check
- Diet advice
2 Impaction care videos
- How to check for impaction
- How to remove impaction
- Before and after impaction care
3 An impaction carer's practical experiences and tips
- Diagnosing an impaction (description)
- Treating impaction in the short term
- Treating Impaction in the long term
- More practical care tips
1 What is impaction?
Impaction is a degenerative condition that affects about 10% of ageing boars. They increasingly struggle to express the poo mass that collects in the perianal sac between the descended testicles as the musculature at their back end gradually weakens. Boars with impaction typically also lose the spring in their back legs.
The condition is rare in younger boars and thankfully only very rarely a neutering complication but malnutrional impaction can affect younger adults as well.
Impaction is unfortunately very smelly. Mild cases can range from needing removing every few days to the very severe that need clearing out several times daily. Dietary measures can milder cases temporarily stop or slow down impaction; they can in combination with regular exercise also help boars affected by an unsuitable diet and cramped conditions but they cannot cure a genetically determined degeneration or other progressive health factors causing or contributing to impaction.
Neutered boars can also be affected by impaction but because their perianal sac has contracted again after the removal of the testicles, the impaction mass is only about chickpea-sized and can in milder cases be pushed out on its own or very easily removed by the owner.
Possible causes for impaction
- Malnutrition: An inappropriate diet lacking in grass/hay fibre is sadly the most common cause for bad impaction in boars coming into rescue or looking for homes on the free-ads.
A general shift towards a mainly hay based diet over the last 10-15 years has actually resulted in a quite significant reduction of the number of impaction cases we have been seeing on the forum.
Lack of hay fibre (often in combination lack of space) is clearly the biggest factor for impaction, well before any other causes.
- Lack of exercise and an atrophied musculature at the back. Cage size really matters!
- A genetic disposition (affects a small minority boars, less than 5%)
- Pain radiating into or pressure on the anal area from arthritis in the lower spine or pelvis, stuck semen rods in the penis shaft, bladder or urethral stones or a hernia in the groin area.
Internal abscesses or tumours (growths) can also prevent poos from being pushed out properly.
- Impaction is a thankfully pretty rare neutering post-op complication but it does happen and is one of the situations where a younger boar can be affected.
- Dehydration can occasionally contribute to problems with pushing poos out. Please check and refill water bottles daily and ensure that guinea pigs have access to drinkable water at all times, including frosts or extreme heat.
Why the need for a vet check?
Please always have your boar vet checked promptly when you suspect impaction!
Here are some reasons why it is is important to make sure that you are actually dealing with impaction and whether the impaction could be caused by other health issues in play:
- Risk of misdiagnosis: What you think is impaction may actually not be the thing in the first place.
- Impaction as a secondary complication: Impaction is not the be main cause/problem but a complication resulting from another health problem, which may go unnoticed until it could be too late (problems in the penis shaft, bladder stones, hernias or internal abscesses or tumors).
- Long time unnoticed impaction can cause infection, which need antibiotic treatment.
Diet advice
A good hay-based diet goes a long way towards minimising the risk and severity of impaction.
- Please keep in mind that hay/fresh safe grass should make over three quarter of the daily food intake and that all other foods (veg, fresh and dry forage, pellets and any treats) together only replace the supplementary role that wild forage used to have in the original diet (ca. 20-25%).
- Keeping the hay fibre intake as high as possible is crucial for impaction boars. Introduce any fresh grass only very slowly in order to avoid tummy upsets.
- Please supplement ideally with hay based pellets (1 tablespoon per piggy per day) - provided you can get them and your boy will eat them - and use hay fibre based recovery formula (Critical is the widest available brand) if extra feeding support is needed. If you cannot get hay-based products, then just use what works best for you where you live - you may have to do some trial and error experiments. You can access our hay brands list for several countries via the diet guide link below.
- Have regular fixed feeding times and do not vary the daily diet if possible. These measures also help towards stabilising impaction and ideally send it into remission at least for a goodly while.
- Please discuss the advisability of supplementing with vitamin B12 in long term severe cases with your vet; especially if your boar is unable to eat a part of his poos.
Guinea pigs are however not like rabbits: they do not produce special redigested caecotrophs containing concentrated vitamin B12; they run normal poos through the digestive tract twice. Please do not supplement on spec.
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)...
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)...
2 Impaction care videos: How to remove impaction with due care
Warning: The following videos have some graphic scenes depicting Impaction.
How to check for impaction
(Video with permission of Worthing Guinea Pig Rescue)
How to remove Impaction
Before and After
(The latter two videos are reproduced with the kind permission of Guinea Pigs Today)