Your experiences with spaying a female guinea pig

[Viennese Furbabies]

Hi, this isn't an urgent question because at the moment it is a purely theoretical one, but what are your experiences with spaying females? How high is the success rate for the girl not only surving the operation itself, but the weeks following the operation?
I must confess that spaying is one operation I'm really reluctant about. Unfortunatly I've known quite a few girls who didn't start to eat by themselves after the operation. Or they started eating at first, but stopped after a few days ... and didn't start again.
A lady I know from the Cavy Club in Vienna had to pts a girl just today. The spaying was highly recommended by her vet due to medical reasons but she also told her that it wouldn't be such a big affair. Well it was and it was fatal in the end.

I once had a girl spayed and it was a big fight. After about 3 weeks Nui was back to normal but though she had physically survived, her behaviour had changed. Not at once but gradually. Before the operation she was a really friendly and happy little girl. Due to her sickness she became really hyperactive and was in season all of the time, started loosing weight rapidly ... so I made the decision in favour of the spaying. She was about 3.5 years at the time.
She turned into a pretty grumpy elderly lady, but her group tolerated her behaviour all right.

Is it just bad luck that I know so many girls who didn't survive the spaying in the longer run (days or a few weeks after the operation)?
Or are there differences in the sucess rate in different countries?
Thanks for sharing your experiences!

 

[Betsy]

Betsy had to have an emergency spay at the beginning of Lockdown 1 last year. She was fine afterwards and started eating for herself after the anaesthetic had worked it's way out of her body. You can read all about it here Betsy Ovarian Cysts?

 

[Swissgreys]

I think it does have a lot to do with how experienced the vet is and that will vary from place to place.
Plus spaying is more invasive and expensive, so less common, and this means only specialist vets are likely to have much experience with the operation.

For example when we lived in the UK we routinely had all of our rabbits spayed and neutered at our local vet.
Here (in Switzerland) all male pet rabbits are neutered routinely before sexual maturity (at around 3 - 4 weeks old) but females are rarely spayed.
We asked our specialist vet and she said she would do a handful of medical spays a year on rabbits, and only if she had a specialist anathesioligist to support her. She actually said she would prefer to refer us to the veterinary hospital in Zurich if we wanted our female spayed, as it is such a rare operation to perform.
To give you an idea of how rare it is, to spay a female dog would cost around 300 Swiss Francs and we were quoted anywhere between 700 and 1000 Swiss Francs to spay our rabbit!
Because it is done so rarely it is considered a high risk operation, whereas in the UK it was fairly routine.

 

[Tigermoth]

I think it does have a lot to do with how experienced the vet is and that will vary from place to place.
Plus spaying is more invasive and expensive, so less common, and this means only specialist vets are likely to have much experience with the operation.

For example when we lived in the UK we routinely had all of our rabbits spayed and neutered at our local vet.
Here (in Switzerland) all male pet rabbits are neutered routinely before sexual maturity (at around 3 - 4 weeks old) but females are rarely spayed.
We asked our specialist vet and she said she would do a handful of medical spays a year on rabbits, and only if she had a specialist anathesioligist to support her. She actually said she would prefer to refer us to the veterinary hospital in Zurich if we wanted our female spayed, as it is such a rare operation to perform.
To give you an idea of how rare it is, to spay a female dog would cost around 300 Swiss Francs and we were quoted anywhere between 700 and 1000 Swiss Francs to spay our rabbit!
Because it is done so rarely it is considered a high risk operation, whereas in the UK it was fairly routine.

Sorry, OT, but I thought rabbits were spayed because of the high risk of uterine cancer. Is that not considered a problem in Switzerland? I presume if they don't spay they have a better data set of modern expectations...

 

[RedLoredAmazon]

I can't speak personally on this as none of my piggies have had surgery while I have had them. But the rescue that I adopted Cocoa (neutered) and Oreo (spayed) from, neuter all of their male mammals and spay all of the larger mammals. I asked them about this and they said it is because someone had adopted a female piggy from them and then started breeding her. They also have them spayed because it cuts down on ovarian cysts and reproductive cancers. I feel confident having my piggies spayed or neutered as my exotic vet performs those surgeries on a regular basis.

 

[Swissgreys]

Sorry, OT, but I thought rabbits were spayed because of the high risk of uterine cancer. Is that not considered a problem in Switzerland? I presume if they don't spay they have a better data set of modern expectations...

That was my experience too @Tigermoth - we always spayed because of uterine cancer risk, but for some reason the Swiss approach seems to be to wait and see. I have asked, but never seen a peer reviewed paper or data set that supports this theory though. And this creates the ongoing issue of vets not being experienced with the operation and it being classified as risky (and expensive.

However to bring it back on topic (a little) vets here are very experienced neutering 2 - 3 week old guinea pig boars, and find it strange that in other countries vets like to wait until the boar is older and the testicles have descended.
Even my local (non specialist) guinea pig vet who said she would never attempt a rabbit spay, will quite happily neuter baby guinea pig boars!

 

[Lady Kelly]

Really it depends on age, general health and vet experience. The more experienced and skilled a vet is at doing the operation the more likely it will be a success. Similarly the risks for a sow are going to be higher if the spay is deemed necessary for medical reasons as that indicates that there is an underlying condition impacting on her health.

Spaying is much more invasive that neutering is for boars but with an experienced vet and a youngish and healthy piggy the risks will still be minimal. I've only had one piggy spayed before and it was an emergency for ovarian cysts. She was over 5 years old and sailed through the operation and recovery without any issues. I had an excellent vet but obviously I was still worried given her health and age that there was an increased risk for her.

Unfortunately you can never remove all risk. There will always be one pig with an undiagnosed health problem, maybe something incredibly hard to pick up on, an underlying heart problem for example and these are the piggies that any operation would just be too much for.

 

[Wiebke]

Attitudes to and opinions on spaying vary widely across the world. In the USA, I know several rescues who spay routinely and use vets who think that spaying is a much easier and safer operation than boar neutering.

Here in the UK, spaying happens mostly for medical reasons (ovarian cysts or less often issues with the womb). Many of the sows requiring a spay are no longer long and it is a much less frequently performed operation compared to boar neutering. Even with newer and less invasive techniques (removal of the cysts from the back but leaving the womb in) used by some vets, success rates can vary. A lot depends on experience and the individual vet.

My own tally stands so far (I have thankfully access to a very experienced operating vet):
- Successfully spayed for medical reasons: 5 sows aged 3-6 years plus 2 already spayed sows adopted; all sows lived a normal healthy life span between 5-7 years. My only current spayed sow is now 5 years old. Several of these sows would have had much shorter lives with the op. All recovered well, even the one where one of her cysts had got stuck to the gut and could not be completely removed.
- Died in operation: 1 due to a basic mistake by a local general vet in 2010 (full GA before x-ray didn't take into account that there was a second large cyst and some major bloating due to the fast growing cysts pushing on the gut so Fflur didn't wake up) before I found the experienced vet...
- Died from a burst ovarian cyst: 1 (Heini, age 3; her ovarian cysts had been checked but considered needing removal)
This is out of over 50 sows I have so far owned over the course of my life. I have another middle-aged sow on my waiting list for a check whether a spay may be needed due to hormonal cysts re. potential cancer risk in old age.

It is worth noting that there are different types of ovarian cysts which typically cause problems at different ages. Hormonal cysts (which are the ones with the classic symptoms but not necessarily so) tend to often cause problems in sows aged 2-4 years while fluid-filled non-hormonal cysts can grow very large and press on other organs in older age (4-7 years). Most cysts, especially the fluid-filled ones, actually go unnoticed because they never cause any symptoms or need treatment. Ovarian cyst cancer is not as common but tends to happen in more in older age although it is often at the bottom of younger adult sows bleeding from their genitalia.
Ovarian cysts bursting is thankfully rare but usually fatal; the bursting cyst isn't necessarily a particularly large one.
Sows: Behaviour and female health problems (including ovarian cysts)

We have seen more spaying ops with a fatal ending on the forum than fatal boar neutering ops over the last few years although boar ops seem to have a higher rate of complications (especially abscesses). However, the majority of boars is a much younger age and neutering is the preferred gender for de-sexing in the UK with the two largest UK animal charities, the RSPCA and the Blue Cross, now having a strict boar neutering policy.



Sows: Behaviour and female health problems (including ovarian cysts)

 

[Black piggies]

I've had a 3 year old spayed due to ovarian cysts, she was groggy the day after and pretty much back to normal the day after that. That was with a guinea pig experienced vet.

 

[Viennese Furbabies]

Thank you for your feedback!
The spays that turned out to be fatal were all performed by vets with guinea pig experience. But I'm not sure if there is really something like an exotic vet in Austria. Some vets are very experienced because they have a good reputation for the treatment of guinea pigs and see a lot of piggies.
My usual vet has done quite a lot neutering operations (she used to work with small rescue, maybe still does), but she is quite reluctant to spay herself.
Nui was operated at the university clinic organized by the specialist vet.

I think that spaying rabbits is pretty much routine in Austria as well. We also have vets who are happy to neuter boars early and vets who are opposed to doing it.

 

[Freela]

I haven't had to have any spays thus far (knock on wood.) I have had pigs who had other surgeries. In the cases of pigs who didn't resume eating or who didn't do well postop, I'm thinking anesthesia could be a factor as well. Different vets may be using different methods of anesthesia. It's my understanding that gas anesthesia is safest for small animals and my small pets (guinea pigs, hedgehogs, hamsters) have done well with isoflurane, which is an inhaled anesthetic. Different vets may be using different meds for anesthesia and postop pain relief which may lead to slower recovery. I know in the case of one of my past pigs, after a tooth trim and lancing/draining of a really deep abscess on her face, the vet kept her for the entire day because she was, in their words, "out of it" following anesthesia and a heavy-duty painkiller. I can't imagine how sedated she must have been because the same vet sent me home other animals who were clearly still pretty groggy/loopy from anesthesia... if they kept her for hours afterwards, she must have been really out of it. She did fine with shorter procedures in the past... I'm thinking either the length of time under (much longer than the basic tooth trims she had before) and/or the fact that they gave her major painkillers because they did so much cutting into her face/jaw/musculature made her recovery a lot harder. So, not particularly about spays, but just thinking that there may be factors besides the specific operation performed that might affect recovery, like drugs given, anesthetics used, length of procedure, etc.

 

[Eriathwen]

I've had 8 sows spayed in total, 7 in the last 2 years, all survived and went on to live good lives