Hi all! I've joined this wonderful forum for some advice.
We got our lovely two chaps (Diego and Piglet) about 18 months ago and although Diego has always been small (about half the size of his bro!) he recently started losing weight. He went from 750g to 550g in about 4 days. After a trip to the vet they decided to give him an anesthetic and check out what was going on inside his mouth. It turns out both of his back teeth were growing diagonally over his tongue making it impossible for the poor chap to eat. The vet filed the teeth right down and he came out of the anesthetic brilliantly. We fed him critical care and he started eating pellets and veggies pretty quickly and we hoped that all was well and that he was on the road to recovery.
But after the first week he slowly stopped eating independently and would only eat from the syringe. Sometimes he didn't even want that. We carried on syringe feeding for another couple of weeks but he stopped putting on weight and he just wasn't himself... no wheeking, no playing with his brother, no exploring. He sat in his little castle and just didn't come out. We took him back to the vets and they put him under again and have found that his back teeth have already grown back. They again filed them down but now he is refusing to eat independently at all. I can't say that his quality of life has been good this past month. The syringe feeding oftentimes feels forced and we feel like brutes. The vet said he also has a weak jaw now which is making it harder for him to eat and is affecting the growth of his other teeth which she had to file during the last op.
He is a young pig and the most gentle and goofy little guy. We would love to give him a chance. But with such a quick regrowth of the back teeth what are the chances that this time he will have longer before they regrow? Does anyone here have experience with this? Is it possible to have the back teeth completely removed?
Sorry for the epic long post. All advice is greatly appreciated
We got our lovely two chaps (Diego and Piglet) about 18 months ago and although Diego has always been small (about half the size of his bro!) he recently started losing weight. He went from 750g to 550g in about 4 days. After a trip to the vet they decided to give him an anesthetic and check out what was going on inside his mouth. It turns out both of his back teeth were growing diagonally over his tongue making it impossible for the poor chap to eat. The vet filed the teeth right down and he came out of the anesthetic brilliantly. We fed him critical care and he started eating pellets and veggies pretty quickly and we hoped that all was well and that he was on the road to recovery.
But after the first week he slowly stopped eating independently and would only eat from the syringe. Sometimes he didn't even want that. We carried on syringe feeding for another couple of weeks but he stopped putting on weight and he just wasn't himself... no wheeking, no playing with his brother, no exploring. He sat in his little castle and just didn't come out. We took him back to the vets and they put him under again and have found that his back teeth have already grown back. They again filed them down but now he is refusing to eat independently at all. I can't say that his quality of life has been good this past month. The syringe feeding oftentimes feels forced and we feel like brutes. The vet said he also has a weak jaw now which is making it harder for him to eat and is affecting the growth of his other teeth which she had to file during the last op.
He is a young pig and the most gentle and goofy little guy. We would love to give him a chance. But with such a quick regrowth of the back teeth what are the chances that this time he will have longer before they regrow? Does anyone here have experience with this? Is it possible to have the back teeth completely removed?
Sorry for the epic long post. All advice is greatly appreciated
My late Enoch had the same problem and the vet said his teeth would keep growing over his tongue. He didn’t recover well and his quality of life looked poor as he absolutely hated being syringe fed so we made the sad decision to send him over the rainbow bridge.
