Pigging Out

Bryce update:

He is doing good. We have stopped giving him CC for a few days now. He is maintaining his weight. His new weight now is 1260g, sometimes more sometimes a couple of grams less which is perfectly fine. He's been eating everything again. He started eating carrots, which he never really liked in the past. I guess giving him blended carrots when he was sick made him change his mind about it. 😂 He also started popcorning often which surprised hubby and me. 😁

Bryce's abscess seems to be gone. 🤞🤞 His neck and jaw seems flat and no lumps/bumps. His wound is also completely healed. 👍

Oh and he and Whitney are back to good terms again. They always follow each other and eat together. Only minor grievances when one of them wanted to be in the box where the other is. 😂

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Hubby dropped the dosage of Loxicom to 0.25ml this morning. We'll see how Bryce would get on with that with regards to pain in his legs. Before his op for the abscess, he was having pain as soon as we drop the dosage to 0.30ml. At the moment, he is still running around and popcorning a few times! 😁😁

Here are the monsters stuffing their faces. Just look how big Whitney is! :eek:😂

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Bryce stopped eating last week again. Well stopped eating all his wet food like cucumber and melon but he was eating hay and grass. His weight went down to 1230g. We think it's because his Loxicom dosage has went down to 0.25ml by that time. He was still walking fine but it must've been giving him some issues. Vet said that it might be starting to get some inflammation and he became a bit uncomfortable. Well we don't really know what exactly was happening, but we were guessing based on the pattern from past experiences with him.

Anyway, we upped the Loxicom dosage again to 0.5mls 2x a day and everyday since then he started eating everything again. Yesterday he managed to not get any CC again and has been eating loads. His current weight is around 1240g and managing it. Last week his weight was around 1260g, so not really a bad dip. Our local vet said we might need to very slowly lessen his Loxicom dosage because he seems to be having problems when we drop it down in quick succession. Hubby has arthritis and he completely knows how tweaking dosages from time to time affects pain thresholds everyday.

Here he is stuffing his face with melon alongside Whitney. 😁😁

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Well after posting the update above, Bryce went downhill again yesterday afternoon. Not really sure why. His weight is down to 1226g this morning! He eats hay and grass fine. Not the veggies. He is mostly in his pile of hay. At least he can eat hay. I'm really clueless at what's going on with him at the moment. 😩😑
 
Bryce completely stopped eating today. His weight was 1219g. It seems like his teeth. It's either his front teeth are long or there is something going on in his back teeth or inside his mouth. He sometimes gags when eating. He was doing it last week but only when he was eating veggies sometimes. But now he does it when eating hay and grass. So he has been put off eating. We are back to completely syringe feeding him. 😭

We phoned C&R but both Simon and Kim are away this week and won't be back till next week. We phoned Derwent Valley Vets for Ellie Whitehead but she's not available until Thursday. We booked that anyway. I just feel so sorry for Bryce coz he wanted to eat earlier and tried eating his hay but keeps on gagging at some point when chewing. 💔😭 Two more days of him being miserable. 😩😩
 
We took Bryce to our local vets. Ellie told hubby yesterday to see if our local vets can check his teeth and if they can do something, and then she can tidy up on Thursday. So we went this morning and our local vet said that his back teeth seems long but he doesn't know if there are any spurs, unless they put him on gas to further investigate. But we don't want that, especially when it takes Bryce so long to recover when put on gas. Vet said they always try to avoid putting guinea pigs on gas unless it is really necessary. And since we are going to Ellie on Thursday anyway, that the best thing to do is wait. He did give us gabapentin to have extra pain relief for Bryce when we requested.

So it's just a matter of waiting..😔😔 Bryce is still perky sometimes. He was popcorning a bit earlier after feeding time and was going thru their food bowls wanting to eat. But then he realises he can't chew properly so goes sulk eventually. 😔😔
 
Well...looks like the Gabapentin has worked! Bryce started eating tonight. He ate the spring greens strips, some honey dew, soft hay, grass and oats. So there must be some wound or something that was hurting inside his mouth that made him stopped eating yesterday. The days before that, he was eating loads of hay and grass, even if he stopped eating veggies. He's been eating by himself for 30 mins now.
 
anyar.dris said:
We've heard about her in the past, but we haven't really tried contacting Rutland House. Is she good with dentals?
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I don’t know about dentals but she’s an excellent piggy vet.
@PigglePuggle goes there for anything beyond the ordinary.
There’s also Birch Heath which is around Tarporley and are very good exotic vets.
 
Merab said:
I don’t know about dentals but she’s an excellent piggy vet.
@PigglePuggle goes there for anything beyond the ordinary.
There’s also Birch Heath which is around Tarporley and are very good exotic vets.
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Yeah we are registered with Birch Heath since 2013..it's just that they are too expensive. We were quoted for the bladder stone op for Bunny in the past with them at around £1000+, so we ended up going to Simon and we only paid around £300+ that time. So we really only go there for super emergency stuffs and we can't get appointments with Ellie and/or Simon and Kim.
 
anyar.dris said:
Yeah we are registered with Birch Heath since 2013..it's just that they are too expensive. We were quoted for the bladder stone op for Bunny in the past with them at around £1000+, so we ended up going to Simon and we only paid around £300+ that time. So we really only go there for super emergency stuffs and we can't get appointments with Ellie and/or Simon and Kim.
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£1000 is staggering!
That’s the trouble with the specialist vets - they can be soooooooo expensive
 
Merab said:
£1000 is staggering!
That’s the trouble with the specialist vets - they can be soooooooo expensive
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Yeah..but they were always amazing really. They are (or were) exotics vets who I believe that caters to the animals at Chester Zoo as well. We couldn't fault them with everything with regards to their knowledge and care. The first piggy we brought there was Timmy in 2013 and they did an exploratory op to figure out why he was always getting bloat. They found out he had hernia from when he was neutered before we adopted him. Whoever did that op didn't stitch the area fully/properly where they snipped the testicles, and part of his intestines got lodged there, hence we thought he was getting bloat because of the blockage. Birch Heath was our last resort that time. An emergency vet referred us to them. The vets there did everything they can for Timmy. We took him home that same night after they patched him up but the op and his condition was too much for him and he passed away that night in my arms. 💔😭 We paid around £600+ that time. The vet gave us a big discount (around £200-£300 I think) because of the situation we were under.
 
So we went to see Ellie this morning to check up on Bryce. Turns out his back teeth are quite long and there is some spur that was going through his right cheek. It was ulcerated according to Ellie. She managed to remove the spur and tidy up his teeth consciously. Although she was thinking before that she would have to do it with a little whiff of gas because Bryce wasn't really cooperating and keeps on wriggling when she was examining his mouth. Anyway she said Bryce calmed down after about 10 mins (we told her the same thing usually happens during syringe feeding, so she maybe just needed to wait him get out of his tantrum 😂) and she managed to do his teeth without gas. He has been eating like he was starving after resting for an hour after we got home. I did feed him on the road! 😂

So he will be on Gabapentin for a few days, along with his Loxicom. We booked an appointment again in 2 weeks time just in case he needs to be seen again. Hubby paid £70 for the conscious dental. Hopefully by tomorrow, Bryce's weight will pick up again. 🤞
 
I'm glad you managed to find out what was wrong with poor Bryce. Well done Ellie! Well done you and hubby too for going the extra mile for him. Those piggies are so lucky to have such devoted hoomans.
 
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