Lump on rear end

[marose88]

I have two piggies, and we’ve noticed suddenly one of them has a lump on her rear end. We also noticed recently she has been losing weight, which is in addition even more concerning, and my partner is worried it’s related. We started giving our piggies more vitamin C water additives and she seems to be gaining some weight. Our other piggie can be selfish with their lettuce treats and is also much larger so I partially assumed she was eating more of the food/hay than the former.

Back to the lump, we noticed it today and it wasn’t there a few days ago. It seems to be between the size of a blueberry and a grape. It doesn’t bother her in the slightest, and even with the weight concern, she seems to be entirely the same in terms of attitude, energy, eating & drinking, bathroom habits, etc. It’s moveable and squishy, somewhat firm. It feels like a small lipoma or cyst, but I’m not sure. I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with this -
I work in a small animal hospital and am a veterinary assistant, so I of course am going to speak with my medical team. Unfortunately, the only few nearby hospital/clinics that see exotics is booked out for about 2 months, so I want to see if I can at least get some words of advice while we wait to get her seen by an exotic vet.

TIA

 

[Piggies&buns]

If your piggy is losing weight, then you need to step in and syringe feed a fibre rich recovery feed such as oxbow critical care, to replace the lost hay intake. Weight is lost when they don’t eat enough hay as it is 80% of their daily food intake.
An increase in watery veg and vitamin c is not what is needed.
Please also do not add anything to their drinking water.

Any lump needs a hands on vet check. I’m afraid we can’t guess what it might be.

All About Syringe Feeding and Medicating Guinea Pigs with Videos and Pictures

 

[Wiebke]

 

[Swissgreys]

If the lump has appeared that quickly then it really does need to be checked.
Even a more general vet should be able to do a quick needle biopsy to rule out a few of the more common issues, and a full on health check would be advisable at this stage too.
If guinea pigs have unlimited hay and a balanced diet they should not be loosing weight, even if they live with a greedy cage mate!