Know you guinea pig, know your poo

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Ech90
Supporter in '13

Post   » Mon Jun 24, 2013 8:12 pm


My beautiful girl Buttercup struggled with chronic soft, smelly droppings for the entire 7 months that she was with me. I feel like we tried almost everything, but nothing helped. She completely stumped all of her doctors. It just about broke my heart when I lost her, but hopefully my experience will be able to help someone else. Unfortunately I can't give advice on what worked for us because nothing did, but at least this might provide ideas of possible treatment options that are available. I went back and looked at her various discharge papers but a lot of this is from memory. I hope I'm not forgetting anything.

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Symptoms: Chronic soft droppings that were foul smelling, signs of pain while defecating (squeaking, arching her back, and flapping her ears while going to the bathroom), and gassiness. She had normal droppings on very rare occasions.

Diagnostics: Fecal float, fecal gram stain, complete blood count and blood chemistry panel, whole body radiographs, and focal caudal abdominal ultrasound. There were no signs of any abnormalities. The next step would have been to do an endoscopy of Buttercup's colon to see if there was something in or irritating her distal GI tract, but she would have had to be put under anesthesia and there were no guarantees that it would provide us an answer. We did not want to put her through that.

Diet Changes: We did a trial period where we completely eliminated vegetables. It was determined that vegetables were not the cause, but Buttercup was fed vegetables in moderation as we did not want to exacerbate the issue. We tried switching pellets from Oxbow Cavy Cuisine to KMS, then eliminated pellets entirely. Tried different types of hay. Nothing helped. It was suggested on her medical thread to try feeding corn husks due to the additional fiber, but I was unable to try that as I did not have access to fresh ears of corn at the time.

Supplements: Bene-bac Plus gel, Kyo-Dophilus capsules that I broke apart and sprinkled on top of her vegetables, and Bio-Sponge by Platinum Performance. Her vet said that these might not help, but it would not hurt to give it to her. I also tried feeding Buttercup "poop soup" from her cage mate Piggy.

Pain medication: At one point Buttercup was on three different pain medications, each one given 2x a day. They were Tramadol (an opioid), Gabapentin (an anticonvulsant), and Metacam (an anti-inflammatory). There were no changes in the signs of pain that she exhibited while on these medications.

Treatments: 2 courses of Flagyl and a subcutaneous Vitamin B12 injection from her vet. The B12 injection was given to help with any type of malabsorption in the GI tract.

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Other medical issues:
  • Buttercup was *very* small for her age. Not even in terms of being weight, but in terms of her bone structure. We knew from her previous owners that she was around 3-4 years old, but her vet said that she was physically only the size of a 6 month old.

    In the five weeks between a vet visit on 2/15 /12 and 3/21/12 she had started to form bilateral cataracts that had no previously been observed. This might have been due to an underlying endocrine disease or congenital defect. She would have eventually gone blind.

    She sometimes twitched very violently in her sleep.

    This was not so much a medical issue but definitely one of her quirks and might be worth noting. Buttercup was very interested in water and drank large amounts of it. This may or may not have been related to her medical issues.
On 5/2/12 I rushed Buttercup to the emergency room because I noticed a small amount of blood around her anus. She was discharged after a few hours because her vitals were stable and the blood had stopped, but they didn't know what it was from. She seemed completely normal and it was almost like nothing had even happened. Even though she had many medical problems, Buttercup was not an ill looking pig. Her vet even said to me once that if he hadn't been told about all of her poo problems, he would have thought that she was extremely healthy. Ten days later, on 5/12/12, Buttercup had what was most likely either a stroke or a seizure and passed away that night.

Video of Buttercup straining while going to the bathroom:


Link to her thread on GuineaLynx:
Buttercup

Photo gallery of her abnormal poops (Lynx, feel free to add this photo permanently to the thread):
Image

wenton5

Post   » Mon Jun 24, 2013 8:45 pm


Echo90. you are wonderful! I followed your thread on poor little Buttercup and am so sad she passed but she has left us with the gift of learning from her. Thank you so much for posting here. Lynx, can Bookfan post her threads on this page? Thank you again everyone, this is just so great. How nice for a guinea owner, especially a younger one who is needing to learn something and very visual and computer oriented who may be able to understand their piggy more and if such the case be able to spot sign of illness by understanding poo. May you all and your fur babies be well. Lara, S'more the more mores, Little Miss Tia girl, Mizz Momma Cinnamoo and the white knight Romeo Choo choochi Anderson.
P.s. I have family in town but will search threads after they leave.

User avatar
Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Mon Jun 24, 2013 9:55 pm


That was an excellent summary, Ech90! I added your photo.

All the diagnostics you had done, you say there was nothing out of the norm? No imbalance of the gut flora?

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Ech90
Supporter in '13

Post   » Mon Jun 24, 2013 11:02 pm


Nope! We did two fecal floats and one fecal gram stain and nothing showed up.

Despite this, I think that her vet still suspected that there was some sort of imbalance at play. Her 3/21 discharge papers state, "Since this is a chronic issue, it is likely that she has some changes to her GI tract (parasites, disruption of her GI flora) that she has been living with for a long time. There is no evidence of gastrointestinal disease on either radiographs or ultrasound."

I just went through all of her discharge papers again and old emails with her vet and noticed that there was actually one slight abnormality in her bloodwork that I completely forgot about. Her vet wrote, "She had a mildly low total protein on her chemistry screen. This may be normal for her, or it is possible that she is losing a small amount of protein in her GI tract. I would like to recheck this at some point in the future with a smaller blood test, but I am not super concerned about it right now."

I had totally forgotten about this, I think because he wasn't too concerned about it so we really didn't talk about it that much.

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Delaine
Supporter in '14

Post   » Tue Jun 25, 2013 12:46 am


Ech90

Those pictures bring back so many memories. I remember getting home and checking on Buttercup's progress before I even took off my coat. I was humming her song for days after you posted it.

I am glad you are back contributing. You and Buttercup had quite the journey. I was so sad when it ended poorly.

How is Piggy?

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TexCavy

Post   » Tue Jun 25, 2013 3:25 am


I have a a healthy poo pic or two or three. Will try and remember to retrieve them soon when a bit more awake. That is an impressive poo pic collection up above so sorry about the struggles with sweet Buttercup.

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Ech90
Supporter in '13

Post   » Tue Jun 25, 2013 11:13 am


Delaine, that is so sweet of you. I still listen to "Build Me Up Buttercup" by The Foundations sometimes when I think about her. For those who don't know, that was Buttercup's song because she would "build me up" every time she had a good poo, "just to let me down" when they were followed by a million more wet mushy ones later. She was indeed a very special piggy who touched the hearts of so many.

Piggy passed away last August, just a few months after Buttercup. It happened very, very suddenly - literally within the span of a few hours. The necropsy showed ovarian cysts and white dots on her lungs that was possibly cancer. She had been to the vet so many times, but nobody had any idea that she was ill. It devastated me to have so many losses in such a short period of time, but grief counseling has helped. Buttercup, Piggy, and my cat Sally are together at Rainbow Bridge now and no one is in pain. Still, not a day goes by that I don't wish they were still here with me.

I took a picture of some of Mork and Mindy's very healthy looking droppings (They are my new guinea pigs that I adopted in the fall. Mindy is spayed!). I put a coin in the picture as a reference for size. Buttercup's poos were often longer than a quarter, whereas Mork and Mindy's are just under the length of a penny.

Healthy Droppings:
Image

Bookfan
For the Love of Pigs

Post   » Tue Jun 25, 2013 12:44 pm


I'll be happy to post summaries when I can summons up the energy. Unfortunately, no fancy poo pics. I save all vet statements so I'll have all the info. along with what I posted.

emilyam19

Post   » Tue Jun 25, 2013 3:03 pm


If you see anything in Charlie's medical thread that might be helpful, you're welcome to it. I have a lot of weird poop pictures courtesy Charlie (there's even a folder on my desktop).

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Tue Jun 25, 2013 6:07 pm


Are Mork and Mindy females? Males have banana shaped ones, no? I'll go add that photo to this thread too.

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Ech90
Supporter in '13

Post   » Tue Jun 25, 2013 10:10 pm


Lynx, Mork is an intact male and Mindy is a spayed female.

The droppings in this picture are definitely from Mork. I watched as they were coming out of him! I'm not sure what you mean about a banana shape? The only thing that has ever really stood out to me about Mork's poos is that they often have a lighter brown streak running down them that contrasts with the dark brown color of the rest of the poo. You can kind of see it in the picture. The vet told me it isn't anything that I should worry about, though.

Mork's (male) poo:
Image

User avatar
Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Tue Jun 25, 2013 10:31 pm


I can say that I recall pictures of male pigs poops looking different. Is Mork neutered? The poops are different for neutered and non-neutered guinea pigs.

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