LMPigs
Junior Guinea Pig
Hi all, its been a while since we have posted but I am looking to see if anyone has any ideas/advice/similar experiences.
We have a female piggy who is around three years old.
Her normal weight is around 1kg, but she has currently lost over 300g and very visibly skinny (you can see her spine etc). I cannot exactly pinpoint when this happened since we unfortunately neglected our weekly weigh ins around the end of term period but she went down from 986g (within normal range) in May, to 738g (much below) on 19 July. Since then she has fluctuated between 723 and 775.
We, of course, took her to the vet when we noticed this. The couldn't find anything obviously wrong (teeth were checked) but potentially a slight rustle on the lungs, and she was prescribed 10 days of antibiotics and painkillers. She finished the course and while she doesn't seem to be loosing further weight, she is also not putting it back on (other than normal fluctuations depending on whether she has recently eaten etc. at the time we weigh her). We gave probiotics in case the antibiotics would negatively impact her digestion.
Her poops are normal (maybe slightly smaller than previously, but then she is also now a smaller size). We have watched her closely and she appears to be chewing and swallowing all types of food (i.e. hay, pellets and veggies). There is no sign that her two cage mates are preventing her from accessing food, and, since we have this issue, we've also been taking her out of the cage every now and again to have a separate snack of porridge oats (we tried with the science selective recovery food but she is not keen). Her appetite is possibly stronger than usual - although hard to be sure since, being a guinea pig, it is normal for her to be always asking for food!
I think the next steps with the vet will be some blood tests and/or a scan to see if they can identify anything that way, but I wondered if anyone has any ideas of what we could look at/for in a case where a guinea pig is eating enthusiastically but remaining significantly below their natural weight. They do go out on the lawn quite a lot when the weather is appropriate in the spring /summer so I'm not sure if she could have eaten some sort of parasite? Do guinea pigs get tape worms?!
Any thoughts that we can then explore with the vets would be appreciated.
We have a female piggy who is around three years old.
Her normal weight is around 1kg, but she has currently lost over 300g and very visibly skinny (you can see her spine etc). I cannot exactly pinpoint when this happened since we unfortunately neglected our weekly weigh ins around the end of term period but she went down from 986g (within normal range) in May, to 738g (much below) on 19 July. Since then she has fluctuated between 723 and 775.
We, of course, took her to the vet when we noticed this. The couldn't find anything obviously wrong (teeth were checked) but potentially a slight rustle on the lungs, and she was prescribed 10 days of antibiotics and painkillers. She finished the course and while she doesn't seem to be loosing further weight, she is also not putting it back on (other than normal fluctuations depending on whether she has recently eaten etc. at the time we weigh her). We gave probiotics in case the antibiotics would negatively impact her digestion.
Her poops are normal (maybe slightly smaller than previously, but then she is also now a smaller size). We have watched her closely and she appears to be chewing and swallowing all types of food (i.e. hay, pellets and veggies). There is no sign that her two cage mates are preventing her from accessing food, and, since we have this issue, we've also been taking her out of the cage every now and again to have a separate snack of porridge oats (we tried with the science selective recovery food but she is not keen). Her appetite is possibly stronger than usual - although hard to be sure since, being a guinea pig, it is normal for her to be always asking for food!
I think the next steps with the vet will be some blood tests and/or a scan to see if they can identify anything that way, but I wondered if anyone has any ideas of what we could look at/for in a case where a guinea pig is eating enthusiastically but remaining significantly below their natural weight. They do go out on the lawn quite a lot when the weather is appropriate in the spring /summer so I'm not sure if she could have eaten some sort of parasite? Do guinea pigs get tape worms?!
Any thoughts that we can then explore with the vets would be appreciated.
