Not eating caecotrophs - a tip

[Totts]

Hi, so my neutered male didn't suffer from impaction, but this tip might help anybody with boars who are. My boy had arthritis and a mass in the vicinity of his kidney. One day he just randomly stopped keeping his boy bits clean and about 10 months later he stopped eating his poop (however his cage mate snaffled them up!). If I got hold of one he wouldn't eat it, and in the race against the other piggy I tended to loose .... there was no poop soup for him. I know that some impacted males will not eat their waste so I figure this will help with them too.
A lot of people advise to provide a vit B supplement, which is definitely helpful to the piggy's health. However, when I took my boy to the vets given the sudden change and no impaction, it was pointed out that vit B wasn't the only issue. To help my boy the vet prescribed Biolapis probiotic. Made up as per the instructions (diluted into 50ml) and 1ml is given twice a day. This is available without a vetinary prescription (e.g. on amazon) although I find it cheapest to get it through my vets. The resulting solution contains yeasts, vitamins, etc. If you have a piggy not recirculating their food for whatever reason, then I recommend a vet trip to be safe; but biolapis may also help your piggy.
I also gave him oxbow multivitamin tablets, which in my piggys' opinions are delicious.

 

[Wiebke]

I am very sorry about the diagnosis.

Piggies will only eat caecotrophs when absolutely fresh as otherwise the digesting gut microbiome in them will have died.

I have in the past used timothy based recovery formula to make more easily broken down grass fibre accessible to the digestion process as the second run through the gut to break it down further and get more benefit is lacking, which is also enriched. To that I added fibreplex, which does a very similar trick to what your vet has prescribed for any guinea pigs not able to pick up and process caecotrophs, like when my Nerys (the large piggy in my avatar) Nsuffered from temporary back leg paralysis due to a swelling in the adrenal gland area just in front of the kidney and it led to a large temporary build up of fluid in her body in old age.

The one thing I would recommend that you reconsider is using multivitamin supplements in addition to your normal veg, pellets, probiotics, which all contain vitamins; keep in mind that your piggy is still digesting a large amount of their food and is deriving nutrition from it; vitamin B is the only vitamin that is actually only accessed in the second run through the gut.

What most people don't consider is that the actual amounts needed for guinea pigs are minute and that you can do more long term damage by overdosing. Vitamins A and D are soluble in fat and not water; this means that the excess will build up in the liver instead of being excreted in the urine, as in the case of the water soluble vitamins. Lettuce is high in vitamin C and vitamin D comes from giving your piggy outside time as long as they can get out of the full sun whenever they wish and are not exposed to heat waves.

Too much vitamin C can actually cause the body to adapt to high levels without deriving any more benefit. Most of the scurvy cases we see on here are ironically NOT from piggies with a real vitamin C deficiency but from overdosed piggies whose levels have suddenly dropped and who are presenting with symptoms of scurvy despite their actual vitamin C levels still being higher than normal.
Vitamin supplements are best used with caution as a short term booster course in the case of an actual illness but they can cause more harm than good if provided long term, unless specifically recommended by a vet.