Clover's Medical Thread

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Zaphy

Post   » Sat Nov 05, 2016 4:37 pm


Clover is a young guinea pig, 350g so probably around 3 months old? She is newly adopted and when I brought her home on Thursday I started to notice signs of a URI- a little bit of sneezing and some green/yellow crust on one nostril. Pretty typical stuff.

The next day (yesterday) when it came time to make an appointment, the crust was gone. So I decided to wait another day till there's actually a symptom, and today the crust has still not returned. I do hear her sneezing every now and again, every few to several hours, but I keep checking her nose and sometimes it looks a little wet on the inside but nothing really out of the ordinary. Listening to her breathe with my untrained ear, I don't hear any popping or other signs of labored breathing.

So I suppose my question is this: do guinea pigs ever just get over a URI on their own? I know that they're good at hiding their symptoms till it's really bad so I'll keep watching, this just kinda seems unusual to me.

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lisam

Post   » Sat Nov 05, 2016 7:47 pm


Pigs can have a URI without having a crusty nose.

I'd contact the rescue you got her from. Since she's just newly adopted they might be willing to treat her.

Otherwise check her weight daily to make sure she's eating normally.

Guinea pigs don't usually get over an upper respiratory infection. I'd take her in for peace of mind at least.

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Zaphy

Post   » Mon Dec 12, 2016 3:14 pm


She did have a URI after all and also a bit of a sensitivity to Carefresh paper bedding, it seems! She's on fleece now and I haven't heard a sneeze from her in a few weeks.

Now I'm worried about another issue. I got her with another young guinea pig, Posey. At the time of adoption, Clover was 350g and Posey 400g. Now, a little more than a month later, Clover is 560g and Posey only 460g. Clover's gotten a bit of a tummy on her and I've started playing the "is she pregnant or just fat" game, but when I compared their weights to the chart on the GL size page, it looks more like Clover's been growing properly and Posey hasn't been putting on enough weight. Is it common for growth rates to differ so much (and is either one concerning)?

Posey doesn't feel underweight, as a side note. She definitely doesn't have as much "padding" around the bones as Clover does, but she has more than I remember Hazel having, and back when Hazel was being seen regularly for her GI upsets the vet told me that she wasn't underweight either.

Also have palpated Clover's abdomen a bit and haven't been able to feel anything in there besides poop, though I'm not sure how early you can feel fetuses in pig pregnancies. Also am not a medical professional, so maybe I'm missing something.

Both are allowed to free feed right now, and I have them in a cage with older pigs so the free feed is with timothy pellets and hay, and then once a day I'll set them both in the quarantine cage and give them alfalfa pellets and hay as a supplement. But maybe I should be doing it the other way around- keeping them in the quarantine cage and letting them free feed on alfalfa, then moving them to the big cage to let them run around for a while each day. Thoughts?

Phantomhorse

Post   » Mon Dec 12, 2016 7:09 pm


Don't free feed them on Alfafa hay because if the calcium, but you can give them alfafa based pellets.

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Zaphy

Post   » Tue Dec 13, 2016 12:22 am


Oh, okay. Thanks- should Clover turn out to be pregnant after all, would it be a good idea to free feed her on the alfalfa hay then, or still just the pellets?

bpatters
And got the T-shirt

Post   » Tue Dec 13, 2016 12:24 am


Pregnant or nursing sows and pups need either alfalfa hay supplementing (not replacing) their timothy hay, OR they need alfalfa pellets. Not both.

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Zaphy

Post   » Wed Dec 14, 2016 4:17 pm


Good to know, I had misunderstood that. Thanks for all your help.

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Zaphy

Post   » Sat Jan 07, 2017 2:44 pm


Pretty confident she is not pregnant. While it's not quite to the end of the possible gestation period, I think at this point I would easily be able to feel any jelly beans in there.

She does like to keep me worrying though. She's been hooting this morning (of course it's at the beginning of the weekend), which confuses me. She is otherwise completely healthy- she is highly active, she's vocal about treats, she has a voracious appetite, and she's coming up on 700g in weight (she is ~5 months, no weight loss). No discharge from the eyes or nose. Aaaand now it's stopped and she sounds completely normal.

I feel like hooting always points to heart from what I've read, but we'll see what the vet says. I'm planning on waiting till the regular vet opens again on Monday- does anyone with more experience feel like this warrants an emergency vet visit?

bpatters
And got the T-shirt

Post   » Sat Jan 07, 2017 6:00 pm


I'd wait. But then I've got one that hoots on and off, sometimes very loudly. She's been thoroughly checked by the vet and nothing has been found. She eats like the pig she is, is active in the cage, and I've just had to ignore it. It always goes away.

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Zaphy

Post   » Thu Jan 12, 2017 9:15 pm


Well, she got a clean bill of health from the vet. No x-rays, but they listened to her heart and lungs and everything and said they sounded good. They asked me to take a video and send it to them if I catch her hooting again, but given her age and lack of other symptoms they thought it unnecessary to pursue further diagnostics. Which I am cool with for the time being.

Incidentally, I never mentioned it on here but the other day I found a little bump on the nape of her neck and had them take a look at it. It's quite small and feels to me more like swollen tissue rather than a growth of any kind, so it wouldn't worry me except that it seems touching it causes her some pain- she'll squeal and struggle. So, just to be on the safe side they took an aspirate of it and it was clean- just red blood cells, skin and fat, nothing tumor-y or abscess-y at all. But I'll continue to keep an eye on it (I wonder if it's a bruise of some sort? Not sure how she'd get one on the back of her neck like that but it would fit).

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Thu Jan 12, 2017 9:49 pm


An unusual location - nobody to bite her, right?

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Zaphy

Post   » Thu Jan 12, 2017 10:19 pm


Well, she does share a cage with 4 other pigs, but I've never seen them get any more rowdy than nosing up at each other over the food dish and maybe small headbutts. So it would have been unusual, but technically possible.

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