Manf
Junior Guinea Pig
Hi everyone!
I’m new here but have read lots of threads as a lurker over the years.
Sorry for War and Peace but.....
One of my sows (nearly 4 years old) had a stone removed about 4 weeks ago. It was quite far down so the vet was able to remove it without the need for surgery. The vet told me to put her on a low calcium diet so I’ve stripped back all the high calcium veg and I run tap water through a Brita filter. In terms of fresh veggies, she normally gets a mix of red and green lettuce, cucumber (to help with water intake), carrots and peppers. At the moment I’m too afraid to add anything else because everything else looks too high in calcium!
I offer a variety of hay but it’s mostly timothy or orchard grass hay. Pellets are Oxbow (for adult GPs) but I only provide 16g per pig and the bowl is never emptied.
I have also started her on daily dose (1 capsule) of Cystease.
Despite this, her urine is still quite powdery and she sometimes cries out in pain when she urinates. The vet has done a urine analysis and says there’s no sign of infection, just calcium crystals that need to be flushed out naturally via increased fluid intake and the low calcium diet. She is still taking metacam and either buprelieve or tramadol for the pain.
Is it possible that there still too much calcium in her diet? I have asked the vet to do another X-ray in case another stone has formed but the vet is not keen to do this because the anaesthetic isn’t good for pigs and she thinks it’s unlikely that one will have formed so quickly. It’s odd because she never had these symptoms BEFORE we found the stone. The only reason I took her to the vet in the first place was because her breathing was unusually rapid!
I found the Ratewatcher’s diet but it’s 10 years old so I don’t know whether the information is outdated because it seems to include a fair amount of high calcium foods.
I don’t know what else to do. I just want her to be better
I’m new here but have read lots of threads as a lurker over the years.
Sorry for War and Peace but.....
One of my sows (nearly 4 years old) had a stone removed about 4 weeks ago. It was quite far down so the vet was able to remove it without the need for surgery. The vet told me to put her on a low calcium diet so I’ve stripped back all the high calcium veg and I run tap water through a Brita filter. In terms of fresh veggies, she normally gets a mix of red and green lettuce, cucumber (to help with water intake), carrots and peppers. At the moment I’m too afraid to add anything else because everything else looks too high in calcium!
I offer a variety of hay but it’s mostly timothy or orchard grass hay. Pellets are Oxbow (for adult GPs) but I only provide 16g per pig and the bowl is never emptied.
I have also started her on daily dose (1 capsule) of Cystease.
Despite this, her urine is still quite powdery and she sometimes cries out in pain when she urinates. The vet has done a urine analysis and says there’s no sign of infection, just calcium crystals that need to be flushed out naturally via increased fluid intake and the low calcium diet. She is still taking metacam and either buprelieve or tramadol for the pain.
Is it possible that there still too much calcium in her diet? I have asked the vet to do another X-ray in case another stone has formed but the vet is not keen to do this because the anaesthetic isn’t good for pigs and she thinks it’s unlikely that one will have formed so quickly. It’s odd because she never had these symptoms BEFORE we found the stone. The only reason I took her to the vet in the first place was because her breathing was unusually rapid!
I found the Ratewatcher’s diet but it’s 10 years old so I don’t know whether the information is outdated because it seems to include a fair amount of high calcium foods.
I don’t know what else to do. I just want her to be better
