Sick young boar with X-rays

[Froggy781]

My bonus daughter’s Guinea has been a little lethargic since the weekend. Took him to the vet on Monday as he wasn’t peeing or pooping hardly at all. They did bloodwork and x-rays but said they didn’t see anything unusual other than looked like small pebbles in his colon. He was given an antibiotic shot and sent home with antibiotics. He is still eating some hay, but not eating a lot and is still lethargic. We got him from a pet store less than a year ago, intacted male. I checked His anal sac and I dont Think he is impacted. I’m not sure what else to do, calling the vet back tomorrow
Any thoughts? Or suggestions? I think He is going downhill

 

[Wiebke]

My bonus daughter’s Guinea has been a little lethargic since the weekend. Took him to the vet on Monday as he wasn’t peeing or pooping hardly at all. They did bloodwork and x-rays but said they didn’t see anything unusual other than looked like small pebbles in his colon. He was given an antibiotic shot and sent home with antibiotics. He is still eating some hay, but not eating a lot and is still lethargic. We got him from a pet store less than a year ago, intacted male. I checked His anal sac and I dont Think he is impacted. I’m not sure what else to do, calling the vet back tomorrow
Any thoughts? Or suggestions? I think He is going downhill

Hi

Please step in with feeding support to keep the gut going and have hopefully a chance of getting your boy through this. Just watching your piggy nibbling on hay can be extremely deceptive.

It rather looks like he may have eaten something he should not have (glitter or some other small particles etc?).

Here is our practical and very detailed emergency and crisis care advice, which we cannot repeat at length in every post. Please take the time to read these links, they contain all the how-to tips and how to improvise in a pinch at first.

You will find them really helpful:
All About Syringe Feeding and Medicating Guinea Pigs with Videos and Pictures
Digestive Disorders: Not Eating - Diarrhea - Bloat - GI Stasis (No Gut Movement) (A lot of the care advice currently also applies to your boy)
Emergency Resources and Critical Illness Care - Contents list and subforum link

All the best! I hope that you can help your boy with our crisis support care tips through the rough of it and ensure that whatever it is will safely come out the other end.
Please be aware that baytril can additionally dampen or even kill the appetite. Follow the information for probiotics and poo soup in the links above to help support the gut microbiome in addition to keeping the gut moving with your feeding support and daily weighing on the kitchen scales.

 

[Froggy781]

Thank you so much! Yeah we are unsure what he could have gotten into, he doesn’t free roam, the vet said maybe something in his hay, even so they look small enough to pass. The only other thing I can Think of us she does place things on his cage if he chewed something I would Think she would have noticed. The new food they got him had whole sunflower seeds in it and half peas. They give him like 2 celery sticks twice a day and Cucumber slices and he always has Timothy hay and pelleted food. And vitamin C daily. I hope He gets better, calling the vet again tomorrow

 

[Piggies&buns]

Thank you so much! Yeah we are unsure what he could have gotten into, he doesn’t free roam, the vet said maybe something in his hay, even so they look small enough to pass. The only other thing I can Think of us she does place things on his cage if he chewed something I would Think she would have noticed. The new food they got him had whole sunflower seeds in it and half peas. They give him like 2 celery sticks twice a day and Cucumber slices and he always has Timothy hay and pelleted food. And vitamin C daily. I hope He gets better, calling the vet again tomorrow

I hope he is ok and that whatever it is in there can come out safely.
I’d definitely remove the new food - sunflower seeds and peas are not safe or recommended for piggies - if you haven’t already done so.


Once he is better, do review his diet.
I would look to give a more varied vegetable diet - the guide below will help with how to give a varied daily veg diet and also shows a sample plate of the rough daily amounts for each item. A healthy piggy with a good balanced diet does not need to be routinely supplemented with daily vitamin c - they get all they need from the diet and in some cases routinely supplementing additional vitamin can do more harm than good.
You say he always has pelleted food. If by that you mean its always in the cage available to him, then please do change that. Pellets should be strictly limited to one tablespoon per pig per day only for long term health - too many pellets can cause health related issues

Long Term Balanced General And Special Needs Guinea Pig Diets

 

[Free Ranger]

Have you had him very long? Could this be something he arrived with?

There have been instances of piggies bedded on puppy pads under fleece and the piggies have chewed up some of the pads. This is risky if they eat a lot because obviously the inner hydrogel core is very absorbent and bungs up the digestive tract. I've only been on here a year or so and in that time there have been posts about pad-chewers but I've not seen any piggy that has consumed a fatal amount so hopefully if they've had a nibble they stop in time. The support-feeding with high fibre food would be your only chance of trying to get the gut to push through whatever it is.

The only other thing is something I know nothing about at all and is probably very unlikely! In the UK we don't really see any cases of worms in guinea-pigs: it's very unusual. But I see you are in Florida and I wondered if this is something that might be a possibility? Perhaps worm eggs or cysts might look like little pebbles... but as I say I don't know anything about worm life-cycles or what various stages might look like on x-ray. I bet your vet would know all about this, but it might be worth asking the question next time you go in just in case they didn't consider worms because he's a guinea pig?