Impaction

[Dawn - Admin]

This condition is most common in older boars.

The muscles have weakened and they are no longer able to expel the soft caecal pellets that accumulate in the perineal sack.

You can help you piggy be smearing a small amount of mineral oil inside the anus with a Q tip. Then gently squeezing the bottom side of the anus to ease the impacted mass out.

There is unfortunately no cure for impaction once your piggy develops it so it has to cleaned out regularly about every month or so (maybe sooner or longer) depending on the piggy.

Regular checks will ensure that you piggy isn't in discomfort.

[lexa]

Don't forget the nose peg, cos this really smells, also offer it back to him to eat.

[Dawn - Admin]

lexa said:

Don't forget the nose peg, cos this really smells, also offer it back to him to eat.

Eew Yuk!! I know it sounds awful but he will benefit from eating it

[bethcarrots]

My step father wouled like to know what miniral oil thingy is and were you get it?as the only stuff hes heard of like that is stuff you put in cars!!

[Dawn - Admin]

I think olive oil would do the trick Beth.

Dawn

[caviekeeper]

Munchkin has something like this.
It almost looks like he pooped but it never came out fully and all compacted at his bum
My poor piglet.
He is not even 1 yet
I'm going to try to olive oil thing and hope that this helps him

[Dawn - Admin]

One of the piggies I recently got from Sarah has this and he is only 8 months old. It smells so bad but it needs doing regular so nose pegs on hehe

Dawn

[lexie]

Hi Everyone,

My one of my adopted boars is showing symptoms of impaction. I did some research & would like if you would share your opinions with me. Besides the mineral oil, Peter Gurney suggests giving the pig a brewers yeast tablet daily. Has anyone ever tried this ? Other people say to cut back on their pellets to 1/4 cup a day & offer mainly timothy hay. Cucumbers & celery were also recommended. Thank you & I appreciate any advice you can offer.

Lexie

[celia]

I haven't tried the tablets but i have found no change of diet helps , its just a case of cleaning it out most days . Its a dirty job but if your boars need it doing then we dont have much options

[cavymaniac]

I haven't tried the tablets either but I've read that once a piggy has impaction, they have it for life. I currently have a piggy who suffers from it and once you get used to the smell (it can be nasty!) and learn a technique for removing the poop it's not much trouble to do.

[equlizer]

I just found out today my boar has impaction Only thing i knew to do was put him in the sink for 10 mins to soften it up then gently massage it out. Now the rest is up to him i guess? He has not been eating any veggies, only hay and pellets so for now i took away the pellets. Would canned pumpkin help at all?

[celia]

sorry but its not up to him he will need you to check on him every other day now to make sure he is kept clean . Impaction if left unchecked can kill your boar there are no fast cures for this it will be all trial and error . Good luck with the pumpkin its worth a try but have never heard that it works x

[caroline]

My boar gets impacted so I have to get the tissues out and gloves on

[delukem]

When boars become impacted they are not able to expel and eat the soft pellets from the rectum and therefore they are not getting any VitB. The best way to do this is to give them Metatone, which you can buy from any Chemist or Supermarket. Brewers Yeast is not the right treatment for this as it doesn't contain any calcium. Metatone does. If you give brewers yeast and no calcium it will have the effect of thinning the bones. Metatone counteracts the effect of VitB by supplementing the system with calcium and stops the bones thinning. We have just lost an old boar who was impacted, but he had lived with this for at least 2 years and we had given him Metatone from the beginning.

[jenniferatra]

I think that Seti is impacted but I am not sure! Today when he was playing with me, he turned around and I saw something white(ish) in colour in his anus. I removed the stuff and it stank to high heaven, it was also mixed with bits of hay and was really sticky.

Is this impactation or something more serious that I should be worried about? Seti is a boar and 11 months old, is it common in this age?

Thanks Jenny

[delukem]

It sounds as if it could be impaction. Usually it is a large round hardish lump of facease which can't be expelled from the rectum and with a little oil and massage it is possible to tease it out, but it does stink. I would suggest as in my previous reply to this thread that you give him some Metatone otherwise he will not survive for very long.

Changing the diet won't help. The only way to keep weight on them is to give vitb with calcium and this does definately work. Without metatone our little man lost weight quite rapidly, but once established on his medication he maintained a good weight right up until he died.

[Niki]

Nov 24, 2009 23:45:30 GMT @jenniferatra said:

I think that Seti is impacted but I am not sure! Today when he was playing with me, he turned around and I saw something white(ish) in colour in his anus. I removed the stuff and it stank to high heaven, it was also mixed with bits of hay and was really sticky.

Is this impactation or something more serious that I should be worried about? Seti is a boar and 11 months old, is it common in this age?

Thanks Jenny

This doesn't sound like impaction to me. What you describe is a normal secretion, i think it's called smegma. I regularly have to clean one of my boars bums as he collects hay/readigrass in there & yes it does honk!
Impaction is literally a hard ball of poop, not white in colour but brown & is easily removed.
I have found that giving probiotic helps with my impacted boars, they don't need their bums cleaning as often

[Dawn - Admin]

Yeah I agree with Niki sounds normal to me it does stink god knows how they can eat it yuk!! but it's very benificial for them

[jenniferatra]

Thanks for the advice, I shall look after him lots even though it is not a pleasant job.

[traylee]

What age range do boars get this from usually? Mine are both 2 years old, i'm not sure if they have it or not. They still poo ok and still eat the poop directly from their bottoms but their bottoms usually look dirtyish when i pick them up and sometimes has soft looking poo in the opening. Sorry gross i know!

[jcdscaviary]

My texel boars just recently had what I thought was impaction, but it was mixed with white (looked like semen). Because they were housed together I can only assume that they were practicing and got it all stuck up there. I cleaned them out and will have to keep checking. Man it did stink A LOT, YUCK!!! Oh and one is 2 years old and the other (his son) is 6 months old.

[delukem]

They can become impacted at any age, although it is most common in the older boar, I would say from 2 years onwards. You will know if they are impacted as the soft stools form a compact but hard ball in the rectum and can be felt from the outside. If your boars are still eating the soft pellets it is very unlikely that they are impacted.

[traylee]

Thanks for that delukem

[fizzyandginger]

i was wondering is this common in boars? and
if this happens in the wild species how do they clean it out?

[abby]

It is not uncommon in boars but much more so as they age rather than when they are younger. It is a good reason to not let all guinea pigs get overweight as they rely on being able to clean themselves up and reach underneath themselves. Wild animals do not generally live as long as captive animals in all species because they suffer from all sorts of ailments. Think of how much hedgehogs for example suffer terribly with fleas and foxes with mange. All conditions that they cannot control themselves without the help of an owner shorten their lifespan.

[delukem]

It is quite common in older boars, but they don't all get it. I don't thimk that there would be many living long enough in the wild to get it, but they do rely on humans emptying them out and they would die in the wild as there wouldn't be anyone to do it for them.

[fizzyandginger]

thanks! that was really useful

[Orlaith]

What are the symptoms of impaction? My Xander is coming up on two years. How would I know if he was impacted?

[fatpiggy2010]

my boar has this. when i took him to the vet i asked him about it and he said pretty much what you said. he poops in a little sack and then after awhile, he will push out a decent sized ball of poop. i would probably start worrying if your pig's sac is getting big and/or you don't see any poop in the cage at all.

it's a gross job, but you will probably have to help him squeeze it out if it gets to be a big problem.

[Orlaith]

I can't monitor how much he poops as he lives with four other pigs, but I'll just check his butt every so often then. Thanks!