Hazel's medical thread

[Zaphy]

Ahhhhh this morning she had what I'm guessing is a scab on her eyelid :( Her actual eyeball looks undamaged as far as I can tell, but I'm guessing that this is something that could be easily infected? Is this something that I should wait and see how she does with, or is it something to make a vet appointment about immediately? Sorry for the blurry photo, this is the best I could get. Looks like she got in a number of scuffles with the other pigs last night, a few of the larger scabs on her rump got pulled off and were bleeding a bit more freshly this morning in addition to this.



The color seems really weird to me, is it normal for scabs to be this bright red color? At first when I saw it I thought it was some fuzz so I tried to brush it out of her eye, so I know it's fairly solid right now and not bleeding any more as far as I can tell.

[Lynx]

How does the eye look? A bright [spelling correction] red scab might be something else or it scabbed over and she took off the top part (leaving a sealed but red lower part). If you want to be sure, you'd have the vet check that the eye under the lid is uninjured. If the eye looks good and you have some protective eye drops/cream of some sort, that might help too.

www.guinealynx.info/.html

[Zaphy]

The eyeball itself that's showing seems okay- it's difficult to tell since she's got dark eyes. I wasn't able to easily get a look under the eyelid because of the squirming and biting, and didn't want to keep trying in case I irritated it.

Would sterile saline solution for contacts be okay to use on a guinea pig? I was thinking I could try to flush the eye a little in case something's stuck in it. I don't have any eye products for guinea pigs specifically.

[Zaphy]

Okay, so the scab has darkened now to a normal scab color, I guess it was just fresh when I found her this morning. Part of the scab seems to be resting actually on her eye... should I be concerned about it scratching the eye?

[Puffmais]

How old are your other pigs? If they're older and bigger than Hazel you should be able to set up a bolt hole small enough that only she can fit in it for her to use as a refuge if the other pigs are bullying her. When I was introducing a couple of baby pigs to my grown up pigs I got a small cardboard box and cut a hole in it just big enough for the babies to squeeze through. The grown up piggies couldn't fit and if they tried to chase the babies in there they'd get stuck in the doorway and have to wriggle out backwards (serves them right!!! LOL). I've also heard of people stacking up wooden blocks to make tiny baby guinea pig sized tunnels :) Do you have anything like this set up for Hazel?

Have you been using any antiseptic on her scrapes? When my piggies have had wounds my vet has always got me to clean them with antiseptic once a day to help prevent infection.

https://www.guinealynx.info/antiseptic_solutions.html

According to the antiseptics page povidone iodine is safe to use near the eyes. So if you're worried about the scratch near her eye getting infected you could use that to clean it. Cleaning wounds is pretty easy -- you just put a little antiseptic solution on some gauze or a Q-tip and gently wipe the wound.

I'm not sure if scabs can scratch the eye or not (I feel like they wouldn't be solid or hard enough to do any damage, but as I said I'm not 100% sure.) I'd just keep an eye out (pun intended, hehe) for any signs of injury to the eye itself.

https://www.guinealynx.info/eyes.html#signs

Whenever I've had a pig scratch their eye it's always been pretty obvious (the injury would form an abscess and go cloudy). If you notice any signs of eye injury from the link above take her to see the vet. But otherwise I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Oh and Hazel is super cute btw :)

[Lynx]

I don't think the scab should be an issue. Puffmais has some good ideas about how to set up the cage.
Sterile saline makes a good flush for an injury. You would primarily be concerned with infection and watch for redness, tenderness, warm to touch, etc. (what an infection would be like in a human).

[Zaphy]

Ahh man. I feel like I should have thought of a set-up like this ages ago. After just a day without the other pigs snapping at her rump it already looks noticeably better! Thank you guys so much for the suggestion! Her eye is also looking a bit better already, the larger part of the scab dried up and fell off/she took it off by washing, and a smaller scab has re-formed so it doesn't look nearly as bad now.

I haven't been using antiseptic on her injuries, but I have been dabbing very very small amounts of Neosporin on the bigger ones, just barely enough to coat the wounds to hopefully stave off infection. I am being very careful about it, have been keeping in mind the negative effects in case of ingestion. Dunno if such a small amount of it is really doing anything to help, they probably wouldn't have gotten infected without it anyway buuuut everything's looking pretty good right now including her poops, so who knows? I do think I'll go out and get some povidone iodine, that sounds like a lot less risky than Neosporin and a good thing to have on hand anyway. Thank you!

I also flushed her eye a little bit with the saline, again who knows if it really did anything to help but at least it doesn't seem to have hurt anything (except making Hazel super mad at me and giving her a wet ear).

So right now the set-up I have is just a small cardboard box (probably ~6x8x12) with two small holes cut in it, on the bottom on one side and the top on the other- that way if the big pigs flip it over while she's outside (or inside for that matter too, I guess) she'll still be able to get in and out. She doesn't leave it much if at all though, so I've switched to feeding her outside the cage more times a day... she could probably use the extra calories anyway even if she's eating more than she normally does. I'm more worried about her staying hydrated. My big sow's taken to chewing on the doorway of the box because she is a whiny princess poopface who has to have everything she wants including Hazel's butt apparently, so I patched it up with a cardboard scrap and some duct tape, which they don't seem to like chewing on- tomorrow I'm going to go get some of those little hard plastic portfolio binder things to line the edges of the doorways with so I don't have to worry about them deciding they do like duct tape and giving themselves blockages.

Anyway, that was a wall of text, but that's my game plan for now! Seriously thank you all so much for all the help!

[Lynx]

Make sure the guinea pigs do not eat the duct tape!

[Zaphy]

Definitely! I've got the report spine cover thing now, and will put it on when I get back from work. My husband's got a live webcam hosted on a little server that we keep the pigs on, so we can see if they're chewing on it or not while we're away from the apartment. They've left it alone quite well- there's a couple tooth marks on it where they started to chew on it and then left it alone, so all's good so far.

Hazel's looking better again this morning, and she's still slowly but steadily gaining weight.

[Zaphy]

So Hazel's been having intermittent diarrhea since my last post, but she was still gaining weight and her poops would return to normal post-poop soup. But in her most recent bout she lost about 30g which worried me since she was already so thin (she dropped from just over 500g to just under 470g), so I took her to the vet. He suggested some diet changes (putting fewer pellets in the cage at a time in order to encourage her to eat more hay), took a fecal and urine sample (waiting on the results now), and gave me some Bene-Bac powder to give to her.

Last night I started her on that, and I'm wondering if anyone has suggestions for how to give it to her. This isn't something I'm supposed to syringe feed her with pellet slurry, is it? I moistened the pellets and sprinkled the BeneBac on top, but it seemed like all the powder fell off and she just ate the pellets, there was a good amount of just powder left in the bottom of the bowl this morning. So this morning I put more water with the pellets before sprinkling, and mixed it all up a lot better. Seems like it's sticking to the pellets much more, it's just been 4 hours and she hasn't touched her pellets yet. Am I misunderstanding the directions? Anyone have experience with BeneBac powder instead of gel?

(Side note: Hazel is now separated from my other pigs by a grid. She just never came out of the cardboard box and it was getting stinky. So I am able to keep track of her input and output quite well now!)

[Lynx]

Does she like softened pellets? You might try a very few with some powder and a few drops of water to moisten things and encourage the powder to stick.

[GP_mum]

Agree with Lynx. My girls would not eat the benabac powder when sprinkled over vegetables or their pellets. I either mixed it with a bit of fruit or vegetable juice and syringed directly or mixed it into their Critical Care mash.

However, my vet also prescribed me benebac in a gel form (squirted from a syringe which dispenses the correct amount every time you click the syringe to release the product). I found this more effective than the powder form. It is more expensive though and I have seen it available on-line on Amazon.