Post dental innapendence

[molzify]

Hi all!

Vet nurse here but of course because I'm a nurse my piggy is complicated

Rupert is a 5-6 year old male neutered rescue pig, for the last 3 years he's required regular incisor burrs but on Friday he stopped eating. Of course I stepped in immediately with syringe feeding and he was taking 15mls over 30 minutes ever 4 hours happily. He saw a vet on Saturday who identified molar spurs hurting his tongue, he then had a dental to burr those down and neaten his incisors on Sunday under general anaesthetic.

He is now 30 hours post dental and still entirely dependent on me syringing him food. I have been slipping herbs into his mouth while he's having syringe feed but he just spits them out. I managed to get him to eat 2 nuggets by himself today to try to convince him that he can chew now. He does also currently have a concurrent URI but is not producing fluid associated with this (he was very snotty yesterday though). Faeces are soft and clumpy but I was anticipating this.

I appreciate that if I'm filling up his tummy with syringe feed he won't eat for himself but I'm so twitchy about causing gut stasis and was wondering if any members had an advice. Is it worth leaving longer between feeds?

Currently hes being fed between 10-15mls of oxbow critical care every 4 hours including overnight.

He is on:
Metaclopromide (Emeprid) 2x daily 30 mins before feeding
Baytril 2x a day for a upper respiratory tract infection that developed on Saturday
Metacam 1x daily for arthritis on a 0.45mg/kg dose
Buprenorphine transmucosal when necessary (he only had this on Saturday night and Sunday morning)

I have separated my female from him this evening so he can get a chance with the veggies! He has a recheck booked with the vet tomorrow and I took him into work today so I could monitor him.

 

[molzify]

Edit to add obviously I meant innappetance but my phone had other ideas. Also he appears to be holding the last 0.5ml of food in his mouth for ages?

 

[A Guinea Pig]

Bump

 

[Wiebke]

Hi all!

Vet nurse here but of course because I'm a nurse my piggy is complicated

Rupert is a 5-6 year old male neutered rescue pig, for the last 3 years he's required regular incisor burrs but on Friday he stopped eating. Of course I stepped in immediately with syringe feeding and he was taking 15mls over 30 minutes ever 4 hours happily. He saw a vet on Saturday who identified molar spurs hurting his tongue, he then had a dental to burr those down and neaten his incisors on Sunday under general anaesthetic.

He is now 30 hours post dental and still entirely dependent on me syringing him food. I have been slipping herbs into his mouth while he's having syringe feed but he just spits them out. I managed to get him to eat 2 nuggets by himself today to try to convince him that he can chew now. He does also currently have a concurrent URI but is not producing fluid associated with this (he was very snotty yesterday though). Faeces are soft and clumpy but I was anticipating this.

I appreciate that if I'm filling up his tummy with syringe feed he won't eat for himself but I'm so twitchy about causing gut stasis and was wondering if any members had an advice. Is it worth leaving longer between feeds?

Currently hes being fed between 10-15mls of oxbow critical care every 4 hours including overnight.

He is on:
Metaclopromide (Emeprid) 2x daily 30 mins before feeding
Baytril 2x a day for a upper respiratory tract infection that developed on Saturday
Metacam 1x daily for arthritis on a 0.45mg/kg dose
Buprenorphine transmucosal when necessary (he only had this on Saturday night and Sunday morning)

I have separated my female from him this evening so he can get a chance with the veggies! He has a recheck booked with the vet tomorrow and I took him into work today so I could monitor him.

Hi

Please monitor the weight daily first thing in the morning for best day to day comparison. This will also help you to plan out the amount and frequency of feeding support for the coming 24 hours in order to stabilise the weight. Please be aware that veg, forage (dry or fresh), pellets and any other treats all together only make about 20-25% of the daily food intake. What you are mainly replacing is the hay/grass intake which makes over three quarters of what a piggy eats in a day.

Could you please translate the metacam dosage into ml (are you using at or dog strength?) to make it more accessible for us. We are an owners and not a specialist medical forum. It sounds fairly low to me considering that guinea pigs need (and tolerate) much higher metacam dosages than other pets.

Between the sore mouth/potentially not quite perfect bite, the post-GA (which can cause rough breathing for a day or two post-op), the baytril (which can also affect the gut microbiome) you are dealing with several factors that will impact on the appetite. All you can do is hang in there. Please do not stop support feeding in order to encourage your piggy to eat more; that works with predatory pets but not with prey animals; if they do not eat, then they have a good reason for it - they are not built to fast.

Please do not separate your piggies; it is adding extra stress. You can try and see whether your dental piggy is willing to pick up and eat a little soft veg like a bit of fresh herb or some blades of grass during a syringe feeding session.
You can also add some probiotics to the feed if they are not in the formula and also consider live gut microbiome transfer from the healthy companion (it comes under the appetising name of 'poo soup' but when done correctly it can be more effective than probiotic powder.

Our feeding/medicating guide contains lots of practical advice and how to tips: All About Syringe Feeding and Medicating Guinea Pigs with Videos and Pictures

 

[molzify]

Hi,
I have been monitoring the weight day and night, bringing my own scales to work for continuity.
Hes on 0.3mls of dog metacam.

Apologies for the confusion in my message, at no point did I mean I was going to stop supportive feeding, just taper it down by no more than 3mls/feed just to ensure I wasn't completely filling his belly. I also did not separate them entirely, they were still in the same cage and able to see and interact with each other through the bars, and these bars were not left in for any longer than an hour.

We have them on Pro-C as part of their normal diet which contains pre and pro biotics.

Happy to report Rupert started to eat hand fed veggies at 11pm, and again at 3am and has been seeing slowly munching hay all morning. I've been propping him up with about 7mls of syringe feed at 4 hourly intervals just to keep his guts moving. He's also had two doses 12 hours apart of the buprenorphine (0.45mls) and it seems to agree with him, no reduction in appetite or sedative effects! He's coming to work with me today (with his wife of course) so I can continue to keep an eye but it looks like he's turned the corner now.

 

[fluffysal]

Good news. Keep munching Rupert

 

[Wiebke]

Hi,
I have been monitoring the weight day and night, bringing my own scales to work for continuity.
Hes on 0.3mls of dog metacam.

Apologies for the confusion in my message, at no point did I mean I was going to stop supportive feeding, just taper it down by no more than 3mls/feed just to ensure I wasn't completely filling his belly. I also did not separate them entirely, they were still in the same cage and able to see and interact with each other through the bars, and these bars were not left in for any longer than an hour.

We have them on Pro-C as part of their normal diet which contains pre and pro biotics.

Happy to report Rupert started to eat hand fed veggies at 11pm, and again at 3am and has been seeing slowly munching hay all morning. I've been propping him up with about 7mls of syringe feed at 4 hourly intervals just to keep his guts moving. He's also had two doses 12 hours apart of the buprenorphine (0.45mls) and it seems to agree with him, no reduction in appetite or sedative effects! He's coming to work with me today (with his wife of course) so I can continue to keep an eye but it looks like he's turned the corner now.

Thank you for clarifying. Sadly we see the things I mentioned in my previous not rarely recommended by vets not quite as familiar with guinea pigs so I wanted to make sure that your measures are the correct ones; especially as threads like this one can come up again in later searches and could lead to misunderstandings.

It sounds like you are doing all the right things. I am glad that Rupert is recovering now and has even started nibbling on hay. I have found that weight monitoring gives me the best feedback so I can manage any support care at the level needed. Always such a relief when the appetite starts returning!

 

[Posyrose]

I'm pleased that Rupert is slowly improving. You're doing a great job with him.

 

[Bill & Ted]

yes, well done you for caring for him so well. I’m glad Rupert is managing to eat hay, he must be on the mend