Syringe-feeding Hilda

[Orlaith]

Hey everyone,

Just thought I'd let ye know that my poor Hilda is having to be syringe feed at the moment.

On Sunday she wasn't really herself, very quiet and withdrawn, and when I had a listen to her, she had a clicking in her chest, so I started her on baytril.

Yesterday morning she was very depressed, hardly moving at all and refusing food so we brought her straight to the emergency vet (it was a bank holiday here so our normal vet was closed). They couldn't find any problems with her teeth that would stop her eating, but agreed her chest didn't sound too good. They gave her some fluids and painkillers as well as a gut stimulant.

We gave her mushed up pellets by syringe every 2-3 hours (as well as water) and she seemed to perk up a lot. She fought the syringe with every mouthful and got more animated as the evening went on. She even attempted to eat by herself a few times (no more than a few nibbles, but at least she was interested!

We brought her to our normal vet this morning and he's pleased that she has improved in the past 24 hours. He gave her more gut stimulant and increased her baytril dose and told us to keep going as we were going.

Thanks to Kayleigh's advice I bought some piggy-friendly baby food and I've given her some syringes with just that, and I've also mixed a bit into her pellet paste, and it seems that she's liking it better now. I also mushed up a poop from one of the other pigs in water and gave it to her to help get her gut flora back to normal.

So, she's definitely improving, but she hasn't pooped in 15 hours, which is really scary. The vet says there's no blockage and it's just that her tummy was probably empty (she obviously wasn't eating longer than we thought) and everything has to work its way through.

So, fingers crossed that when I get up for her night feed or at least by morning that there'll be poops all over the cage, or else it's back to the vet!

[sugar10381]

Aww! Poor piggy. Sounds like she is improving and your doing all that you can do. Good luck and keep us posted.

[gizzy]

Sorry your Hilda is not well

lf you have a coffee been miller and a juicer, You can reduce the risk of tummy upset by "sticking to her normal diet"

Use her usual dried food by milling to a powder , and make a paste , with the juice from her favourite veg .

This method has the advantage of mixing different veg to tempt her to eat

The veg juice is also a great natural way of keeping a poorly piggy hydrated !

[Orlaith]

Thanks!
We don't have a juicer or coffee grinder but I did buy some non-sweetened cranberry juice to try with her.

Well there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that there's still no poop, bar one tiny one that was the size of a grain of rice. So, it was back to the vet this morning.

The good news is that she's still in good form, still making attempts to eat by herself and her weight is holding steady.

The vet is a bit perplexed as she's obviously not well when she isn't pooping, but if you didn't know she was having problems eating and pooping then you'd think she was a perfectly healthy pig. He's happy with her level of hydration (and we've seen her pee), he had a good look at her teeth and they seem fine, and when he palpated her there didn't appear to be any blockages. So, we're going to keep going with what we're doing and also giving her some liquid paraffin twice a day to get things moving.

Fingers crossed there are poops soon!

[Orlaith]

No poops :-\ Well, there were three rice grain size ones, but that's it. I spoke to the vet on the phone and we agreed to give the liquid paraffin one more day. If there's nothing by morning then it's back to the vet for tests.

Her weight is steady and she's having a go at some of her veg and hay, but not nearly enough to keep herself going. We pureed some red pepper today and she seemed to like that (well, she didn't fight the syringe quite as much).

I have to admit, I'm getting really worried about her. I can't say that out loud because I'll get really upset, but I'm scared she's not going to pull herself through this I'm trying to stay positive but I thought she'd be eating by now and covering the cage with poops. She's still really bright, though, so I'm hoping she'll come good.

[madmommy]

HUGS!!!

If her attitude is good, that's good. I'd say as long as she's drinking water well, that's probably a good sign.

[fudgeandsmudge]

Come on Hilda! I'm praying for poops!!!!!!

[Orlaith]

We have poops!

Yesterday Hilda had her teeth filed down a little (though they weren't really overgrown) and had x rays and bloods taken. All her results were normal and the vet thought the teeth were not the cause of the problem.

He also have her abdomen a good massage, which is most likely what got her gut moving again. Yay!

The poops are still small and her appetite is still not back to normal (and she still doesn't appear to be drinking by herself) but this is great progress!

I'm now spacing her feeds out to every 4 hours rather than every 2-3 hours to make her a bit hungry and encourage her to eat for herself. Yay!

[twistedsymphony]

yay for poops! congratulations!

[Orlaith]

So happy! I never thought I'd be so happy to see poops all over the cage!

She did 56 poops in 5.5 hours on Saturday morning. It was like she couldn't stop once she had started! Now, they weren't normal sized, they were about the size of 2-3 grains of rice stuck together, but it was such a relief to know her gut was moving again.

I stopped giving her the liquid paraffin then but kept up with her syringe feeds. On Sunday she had a bit of diarrhea so I stopped giving her any puréed fruit or veg and stuck with just plain mashed pellets and that seemed to get her back to normal.

We put her back with her friends on Sunday evening, intending only to put her there for a few hours and then take her back out to monitor her poos overnight, but she was so happy and there was such a change in her that we decided it was better for her recovery to stay where she was. We had only blocked her off at the end of the cage, so she was still able to touch noses through the grids, but it obviously made her feel lonlier than we realised. Her cagemates all came running up to her and sniffed her and groomed her face and then all slept around her that night, it was so cute and heart-warming! She also became a lot more active and made more of an effort to eat for herself and she even drank for herself for the first time in a week!

I spaced out the syringe feeds even more on Monday, and after giving her a feed early on Tuesday morning I decided to cut out the feeds to see if she was eating enough on her own (she was getting all excited for her veg and munching away on hay and a willow ball and pellets). I weighed her yesterday, though, and she had dropped 70g in 2 days, which is quite a bit, so I'm supplementing her with 2 syringe feeds a day for a few more days, just until she gets 100% back to herself.

She's not quite back to normal, but she has improved so much. I was really scared she was going to die. I took a whole week off work to help her, and I'm not sorry I did because there's no way she'd still be here if I hadn't. She has gotten more used to the syringe feeding and is pretty calm about the whole thing, which is great because I don't feel so mean anymore! And she's still letting me pet her, so we're still friends. Phew!

So now that she's on the mend I should be back on the forum more. Hardly slept with getting up for night feeds, but I feel great after sleeping through the past two nights. I don't know how people with babies survive!

[madmommy]

So glad to hear the good news!

[Orlaith]

Haha, turns out I weighed her wrong and her weight is fine! So she doesn't need to get syringe-fed anymore. Yay!