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Post by tehbuggy on Jan 14, 2011 18:15:15 GMT
Raiden always eats and drinks waaay too fast. Sometimes when she's eating or drinking (usually drinking) she'll start making a coughing noise, and it almost looks like she's choking or something. Lately I've been keeping an eye on her and holding her water bottle so she'll slow down a bit, but I don't know what else to do. She doesn't seem to bothered by it, but it scares me pretty bad! If she does actually start choking, what do I do? Is there some sort of safe piggy heimlich maneuver?
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Post by kellyb on Jan 14, 2011 19:36:30 GMT
My children had major health problems when they were babies and part of the issue was constant choking (every mother's worst nightmare). So I know a little bit about choking (with people, not pigs), but I'll share a bit of info. My guess would be that if they are choking on water, there will be nothing you can do to stop that, it's not like an item of food is lodged in their throat. My kids choked on both food and drinks. When someone chokes on a drink what is happening is that they're aspirating the liquid into their lungs. You probably know the expression "that went down the wrong way", well it's true it went down the windpipe instead of the esophegus - which will definitely cause coughing, maybe even vomiting. If she does this, I would think the most important thing would be to make sure she does not develop pneumonia. So just keep a closer listen, to her lungs and breathing, more closely than the others would be my suggestion. With people, you can give them nectar (because it's thicker) and they're not as likely to choke, but with that's not an option for the piggies.
My sow, Sugar eats too fast and coughs sometimes while eating. I figure there's not much I can do. She's an animal and she'll either learn to slow down or she won't. So I just always watch her if she's doing that and she always manages to get it down. I never give her food with seeds in it, and if she gets celery, it's cut it up VERY small.
Good luck! Hope that helps a little.
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Post by lisamahey on Jan 14, 2011 21:27:02 GMT
I had this problem with a hamster. It turned out that the bottle just let the water out too quickly. I brought a new bottle and she was fine after that. maybe be worth a go for a couple of pound?
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Post by heeeeeeeeeyyyy on Jan 15, 2011 15:42:54 GMT
I haven't heard my pigs make choking sounds while eating, but I did have this one pig who would "fake" choke. I would put this harness on her to see if I could bring her outside in it, and when I put the velcro around her neck she would make a choke sound, so I would hurry up and loosen it, thinking it was too tight. Then one day I went to put the harness around her neck, and didn't acctually put it on her, and my pig make that choking sound! she was totally faking me out. I stopped using the harness pretty much before I started, because she obviously didn't like it, but I did learn that pigs can be fakers!
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Post by tehbuggy on Jan 16, 2011 4:46:00 GMT
Wow, Kellyb, that must have been really scary! Thanks for the advice everyone, I'll keep an extra close eye on her and I've changed the water bottle to see if that helps.
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