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Question about something ingested

TheLittlePig

TheLittlePig

Junior Guinea Pig
Joined
May 30, 2023
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Cape May NJ
So I always vacuum the floor and make sure everything that’s unsafe is blocked off or picked up before I let the piggies out for floor time and I guess the kids had dropped a cracker on the ground my girls sniffed it out, I turned my back for 5 seconds and they pushed their way trough the barricade to get to it, I don’t know how much they ate of it, if it was a whole cracker dropped then they were able to eat half of it, it was a whole wheat ritz cracker, will this harm them? Should I go to the emergency vet?
 
TheLittlePig said:
So I always vacuum the floor and make sure everything that’s unsafe is blocked off or picked up before I let the piggies out for floor time and I guess the kids had dropped a cracker on the ground my girls sniffed it out, I turned my back for 5 seconds and they pushed their way trough the barricade to get to it, I don’t know how much they ate of it, if it was a whole cracker dropped then they were able to eat half of it, it was a whole wheat ritz cracker, will this harm them? Should I go to the emergency vet?
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Hi

Please take a deep breath. This should not harm them; piggies can digest wheat.
 
Oh thank god I was definitely worried bc I know their digestive systems are delicate and I know some things are poisonous and when I looked it up it doesn’t give a definitive answer and when I called the vet I was put on hold lol so I was definitely panicking
 
TheLittlePig said:
Oh thank god I was definitely worried bc I know their digestive systems are delicate and I know some things are poisonous and when I looked it up it doesn’t give a definitive answer and when I called the vet I was put on hold lol so I was definitely panicking
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The digestive system is actually pretty robust in terms of digesting fibre/plant matter and they have a much larger appendix compared to ours. What yours have eaten is thankfully a pretty small amount. ;)

What guinea pigs are struggling with is large amounts of new fresh foods that have not been gradually introduced (i.e. the gut microbiome has not had time to adapt) and the fact that - like all rodents - they do not have a vomit reflex when it comes to eating poisonous plants (foxgloves and fresh dog pee being the most commonly fatal ones) or indigestible things so they always have to pass through the body and come out the other end.

And of course a diet of crackers, cereals and human meal leftovers etc. does lead to severe malnutrition and an early death. It sadly still happens. :(
 
They definitely gave me a good scare, I was so worried they’d bloat or something bc of the starch, I will definitely be checking the cracks and crevices better before floor time for now on 😅
 
And to make matters worse when I seen them munching away on something I yelled “oh my god” and ran at them and scared the hell out of them and I couldn’t even give them an I’m sorry treat bc I was worried about their bellies, so they got some extra snuggles
 
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