Harvey Medical Thread

[HarveytheGP]

Hi all,

I apologize for the long post - we're currently in the midst of a pig medical scare and are really worried.

My girlfriend and I adopted Harvey in late October. He's approximately two years old and has generally been in good health since we adopted him. He's got a MW cage at home, eats a cup (sometimes more) of predominantly leafy veg a day, has constant access to hay and pellets and water, and gets lots of socialization. He is a solo GP as he gets anxiety when around other GPs. We noticed that he was straining when pooping (sometimes when peeing - hard to tell which he's doing sometimes) accompanied by hunched posture and higher pitched squeaking. We took him to a vet two weeks after adopting him to get him checked out, and everything was found normal - as he was eating fine, pooping and peeing continuously, and just had some issues occasionally, the vet said not to be concerned.

In the past week or two Harvey started to shed more, and some of his poops were being accompanied with a "pop" sound, which we figured was indicative of gas. He was still going to the bathroom fine, but considering the change we decided to take him to the vet again (an animal medical center with a vet recommended by this forum). The vet conducted a thorough examination on Thursday 1/31, took multiple X-rays, and sent a stool sample out for pathology. The visit took 3+ hours long, and by the end of it Harvey seemed to be shivering/was pretty reserved in my lap. I bundled him up as much as I could in my jacket/lap (I assumed the shivering was from being cold) and got him home as quickly as possible. The X-rays showed no blockage in his urinary/GI tract.

This is when things turned for the significant worse. When he got home Harvey became incredibly withdrawn, hid in his house, wouldn't eat/drink/poop, and looked really bad (listless, wobbling when walking, generally looked really weak). We gave him a few hours like this to see if he was just stressed from the vet, but it quickly became apparent that he was going into shock/GI stasis. We contacted the vet again and explained his symptoms (which also eventually included poops with gas/mucus bubbles in them/generally disfigured poops) and the office recommended that Harvey be admitted into the ER/critical care immediately as they also thought he was going into shock. The vet said that the pathology on his stool sample showed that he had a gut imbalance, but that that pathology should not have caused the symptoms he was experiencing. After some back and forth with the vet office, we decided NOT to bring Harvey back in as we think the visit/stress of the visit caused the shock in the first place, and we cannot afford thousands of dollars in admittance fees for stabilizing we could do at home/purely investigative procedures.

Friday and Saturday morning we nursed Harvey hourly, kept him on a heating pad, massaged his stomach, gave him simethicone and pushed water/hay/veg as much as possible. We also determined that he has not been eating pellets the past few days, and has lost a decent amount of weight. We brought him to a different vet (the one who saw him at two weeks post-adoption) on Saturday afternoon, and he seemingly had gotten out of the woods/was acting his normal squeaky inquisitive/active self. The vet tested for Giardia (negative) and told us to check back in this week. We also got a prescription for Critical Care and started syringe feeding him Sunday (yesterday).

Neither vet has been willing to prescribe motility drugs as they're concerned that if he has a GI blockage, it will rupture. Yet at the same time he's now pooping much less, not eating his pellets (as of this morning was still squeaking for fresh veg, eating hay, and drinking water- he hates being force fed the Critical Care but we're managing), and the X-rays that were taken on Thursday showed no blockage.

I don't know what to do at this point - we're going out to buy new pellets tonight to try to see if he'll eat something different than what he's had (while continuing to syringe feed). We're calling the vet tomorrow to check in and try to get prescribed the motility drugs to get him going again, in order to then eventually be able to get the antibiotics for his gut imbalance - but if he says no because of concern of a GI blockage, we literally don't have anywhere to turn.

Has anyone experienced anything like this with a guinea pig? We really love him and neither of us could imagine him dying despite only having him for 4 months. Please help.

[bpatters]

Are you sure he's pooping less? Sick guinea pigs sometimes eat all their poops, not just the cecal ones, and that can skew the diagnosis of what's wrong with them. It may be that he doesn't have a blockage at all.

Be sure to syringe fluids to him. Dehydration can make any illness worse. It might help if one of the vets would teach you to give him sub-q injections so you can keep enough fluids in him.

[Lynx]

Weigh him at least once and preferably twice a day. Hand feed him aggressively to maintain his weight. Not eating can cause a cascade of problems. As bpatters points out, fluids are very important. If he is pooping some, it is fairly unlikely there is a blockage.

It sounds like you need to read over:
www.guinealynx.info/handfeeding.html

Initially, I would have suggested the possibility of stones but the xray seems to have ruled that out.

I am sorry he is doing poorly. I don't know why he would have gone downhill so quickly after seeing the vet.

[HarveytheGP]

Thank you both for your replies! Positive update: Harvey is looking much, much better. The syringe feeding has really helped (and he's much more amenable now that I cut off the tip of the syringe and am slightly warming the Critical Care!), and we changed his pellets to ones he seems to like better. They're not nutritionally ideal, but once he's 100% back to normal we'll slowly transition him to a better brand/nutritional composition. At this point we're just glad that he's eating and drinking regularly, and that his poops look great! Never thought I'd get so excited about poop.

We have not been great about weighing as the scales that we have at home have not been appropriately sized - we've got a new kitchen scale in the mail as I type. We're unfortunately a little bit back to square one - Harvey still strains to poop (hunches/looks like a surprised cat, high pitched squeaking/straining). Everything looks great otherwise but I can't figure out what the underlying cause would be. Could a gut imbalance cause that much discomfort when pooping? It seems to be the end process that is the uncomfortable part as opposed to the digestion aspect. Do either of you have experience with that?

Edit: Lynx I can add a video of what the straining pooping looks like if you tell me where to send it.

[HarveytheGP]

Also, to respond to your comment Lynx, our current educated guess in terms of the immediate downhill is that he had been avoiding his pellets a few days prior to the visit which we didn't catch (kicking ourselves), which began the decline in digestive motility. We're then guessing that the 3 hour long stressful vet visit was a catalyst for full-blown GI stasis.

[Lynx]

You would need to upload a video to youtube and put a link here. Glad to hear he is doing better.

[Sef]

The hunching, straining and crying when eliminating are classic signs of a stone. I wonder if a gas pocket might have hidden it on the x-ray. I'd be interested to see the images. Any chance your vet could email them to you so that you could post them here?

[HarveytheGP]

Hi Sef,

Thanks for responding! We do have the Xray images, which we can try to get posted here. I think Lynx would need to upload for us?

In a further update on Harvey actually - we think he's now dealing with mites due that were dormant and triggered by the stress he's been under. We're taking him to the vet tomorrow morning to get diagnosed/hopefully treated with Ivermectin. We'll be taking him to an exotic animal wildlife center a little further away next week to try to work on the pooping issue.

I feel terrible that he's been through so much recently :( He's been going absolutely nuts the past two days with the scratching/discomfort - I've been very close to just self-treating.

[bpatters]

Just don't let the vet do a skin scraping for mites. It's painful for the pig, expensive for you, misses the mites 50% of the time, and the end result is the same as not doing it -- treat for mites.

[Sef]

You can certainly treat for mites yourself. You just need to read the information here thoroughly, and make sure you have the right product and correct dose:
https://www.guinealynx.info/mites.html
https://www.guinealynx.info/ivermectin_treatment.html
https://www.guinealynx.info/ivermectin_products.html
https://www.guinealynx.info/ivermectin_topical.html

The topical "pour on" Ivermectin product is the easiest and safest to use. I buy mine at a farm and feed store; runs about $21 for a large bottle. We can help you figure out the dose if you decide to do this yourself. You'll just need the Ivermectin, a scale (to get his exact weight) and a 1cc syringe.

If you want to email me your images, I'll be glad to post them this evening: pigaholics@gmail.com.

[HarveytheGP]

I’ve been reading quite a lot about mites in the last few days! Unfortunately we don’t live in an area that has accessible farm/hardware stores that have Ivomectrin available. We just went to the vet today (no mite scraping!) and got the following dosage:

.05cc oral of Ivomectin 1% Injection #3609. At time of prescription Harvey weighed 2.2lb (1kilo).
We have 4 syringes and are instructed to give Harvey 1 syringe a week.

Im a little skeptical as everything I’ve read has been .2mg/kilo once, and then the same dosage 7-10 days later. Any thoughts there?

[bpatters]

The same dosage 7, 14, and maybe 21 days later if he's got a bad infestation.

Ivermectin is easily obtainable from Amazon.