Worried about Sandy

[JunePiggies19]

Hi,
I'm worried about my guinea pig Sandy. He seems bright and appears to be eating and drinking normally but his poos are a lot smaller than usual and some of them are tear drop shaped.
Any advice would be really appreciated, thank you so much.

 

[Piggies&buns]

The small poops signify reduced hay intake and a digestive upset.

As you cannot gauge they are eating enough by eye, please switch from routine weekly weight checks and instead weigh him daily. This will help you more closely monitor food intake and allow you to step in and syringe feed him to keep his weight up (stop losses).

Please keep him off veg for time being and see a vet if his poops don’t normalise in a couple of days.

Not Eating, Weight Loss And The Importance Of Syringe Feeding Fibre
Complete Syringe Feeding Guide
Digestive Disorders: Diarrhea - Bloat - GI Stasis (No Gut Movement) And Not Eating
Weight - Monitoring and Management

 

[JunePiggies19]

Thank you for the advice, hopefully he'll be back to normal soon

 

[Wiebke]

Thank you for the advice, hopefully he'll be back to normal soon

Hi!

Please take the time to read our very practical and informative step-by-step guide links. You will find them very helpful as they will give you the tools to assess the situation, know how to monitor correctly, what to do and when to see a vet. We cannot give you the whole information in just one post since we all do this for free in our free time; for the practical how-to and more in-depth background information we have created our guides.

All the best! Please keep in mind that around 80% of what a guinea pig eats in a day is hay (and NOT veg), so if you just look at the veg, you can easily miss most of the food intake with rather dramatic consequences.

I hope that it is just a minor tummy upset.