Larrie's medical thread - chewing issue

[puffin]

I seem to have weird luck with guinea pigs! Larrie is another one of our recently adopted pigs. She is about 1.5 years old. She was overfed when we adopted her (weight was 1520 g) and would inhale her daily greens.

Last Saturday evening, she was struggling to grab her greens (she had no trouble during the morning feed). She would fling them around, and if she tried to chew she was making these sort of grimacing faces and pawing at her mouth. Sometimes she would start chewing and then spit out the green.

I had given some oat hay and corn husk earlier in the day and thought maybe she had something stuck in her mouth, since this was a pretty abrupt eating change. It's a motion I've seen other pigs do that resolves in a day or so. She has always been a great hay eater and her incisors did not show anything concerning. The behavior continued throughout the weekend, so we went to the vet on Monday (they worked us in for an urgent care visit). They did an unsedated exam and did not see anything obvious. We booked in for a sedated dental exam last Wednesday and put her on meloxicam. She seemed to improve with her eating by Wednesday, but we had the exam done anyway by our exotics vet.

The vet didn't find anything of note. Her molars were not overgrown and the x-rays were unremarkable. I asked about any swelling or abrasions etc. and the vet didn't see anything of that nature. I believe she filed a spur (in typical fashion I cannot find the post-procedure report with the pictures and notes), but my recollection is there was a note about minor filing done. The dental was done under injectable anesthesia and it's taken her a few days to normalize from that it seems. Her weight dropped to 1420 but has ticked up a bit to 1440 now without supplemental critical care. The vet was not concerned with this amount of weight loss following the procedure for a pig of her size.

She is eager for greens and if I provide cut up pieces of "tougher" greens (like curly endive and escarole) she has no trouble eating those. If I give her a more "delicate" green, like a spring mix, she will either still fling it around trying to get it in her mouth (and doing the grimacing/spitting out) or she will just eat it normally like there is nothing wrong at all. She has no trouble with red pepper or her vitamin C biscuit. I have been concerned about her water intake (I've seen her at the drinker sort of mouthing it but not actually drinking). I am offering water by syringe (which she takes) and have been doing a couple of very wet critical care feeds for extra hydration. I've put out water in a bowl and put in an alternate drinker that has a different type of nozzle. I'm going to add a smaller-nozzled drinker today once Amazon delivers it.

She is wolfing down hay and shows no preference for softer or stemmier pieces. She eats the little fuzzies from the hay just fine as well.

I plan to continue to monitor her this week and keep her on the meloxicam for the short term in case there is some residual discomfort from the dental exam. I am just not sure what to try next if it doesn't resolve. We could request another sedated dental from the more specialist vet (here, I have a regular exotics vet and we have a more expensive exotics-only specialty clinic about 45 mins away), but I don't want to put her through the stress of that if there is something else to consider.

I welcome any thoughts or suggestions of next steps to try! I am hoping in a few days she is just fine and this has all been me being extra anxious, although that never seems to be how my luck goes!

[Lynx]

It sounds like you are doing everything right. I was surprised the vet used an injectable anesthetic (I was under the impression that inhalant anesthetics were safer - used properly).

I truly hope this completely resolves for her. Your plan to monitor (which you do so well) sounds like a good one.

[ItsaZoo]

As you monitor be sure she’s actually eating hay and not just going through the motions and moving it around. I missed that when one of my pigs had chewing difficulties. She looked like she was eating, but she was just nosing through the hay. And she did the same with the water bottle. She’d make a pass but she wouldn’t stop and actually drink.

I hope you can get this figured out.

[puffin]

A quick update - Larrie is back to normal with her eating/chewing, so I'm not sure what the issue was, but maybe some sort of jaw sprain or something making things temporarily uncomfortable!

[Renonvsparky]

Perhaps a hay poke or something stck in her mouth.

[Lynx]

Thanks for the update. Happy to hear Larrie is eating well!

[ItsaZoo]

So glad to see this! Thanks for the update!