Vitamin C for a baby that won't eat veggies

[Kharkhar]

My little Bailey is currently on his 2nd round of Baytril for a URI (good thing I love him, 400$ in vet bills already in a month!). Anyways, he takes the Baytril, and the Bene-Bac probiotic, that's fine. He had a dose of Revolution last night too as the vet found that he had lice as well. Just some background information in case it's relevant!

Anyways, he eats a ton of timothy hay, he loves that. I feed him the Oxbow baby guinea pig food, but the vet told me to switch to adult as soon as this bag is done. Other than that, he will not touch veggies. No sir. He actually runs away from it. No veggies, no fruit. I've tried all kinds, lettuce, grass, dandelion leaves, pepper, strawberries, cucumber, apple, orange, parsley, cilantro... He will have none of it. He also won't eat the Oxbow vitamin C tablets. The vet recommended that I get fizzy vitamin C at the pharmacy, does anyone here have any experience with that, I'm guessing human doses must be pretty strong for a guinea pig! How much does he need?

[madelineelaine]

ask the vet how many miligrams, then find the lowest dose for humans and split the tab accordingly. I beleive guinea pigs need 25 mgs, so if you can find a 100 mg tablet then you would give a quarter.

[Kharkhar]

Well I didn't find a 100mg fizzy tablet, only a 1000. So I weighed it out, split it into 5, then diluted 200mg into some water. So that's 8 doses and I am feeding it to him in a syringe to make sure he gets it. it's 1.5ml which so I'm splitting it into 0.5CCs 3 times a day.

[bpatters]

@Kharkhar , that won't work. Vitamin C begins to deteriorate almost immediately after you put it in water, so anything after the first dose you give is useless.

You can split a child's 100 mg tablet into fourths, dissolve one piece of the tablet in water, and then immediately syringe it to him. And there's no need to do it several times a day, once is enough.

Have you tried teaching him to eat veggies? Pick one, any one, and chop it into tiny pieces, like a pencil eraser in 10-12 pieces. Sprinkle it on his pellets. In several days, he'll get enough to become accustomed to the taste, and then you can feed it in larger pieces and start on another veggie.

I'd suggest starting with red or green leaf lettuce. After a week, offer it to him in a bigger piece, and then try a bell pepper. Also, once he eats lettuce, you can roll thin slices of other vegetables in the lettuce leaf, like a cigarette, and hand feed him. They're like kids, you have to teach them to eat vegetables.

[Kharkhar]

Bpatters, thanks! I don't have children's vitamin C but I do have the Oxbow 100mg tablets that I can use, I just didn't know if they'd dissolve well in water, I guess I should have just tried The 3 times a day was just because 1.5 ml was too much in one go for him, that was 3 syringes full and after 1 syringe he was fighting me, so I figured I'd just give him one syringe a few different times a day to not scare him off it too much!

I did try chopping the veggies up and mixing it with his food, but that only made him ignore his food and just eat hay. I will keep trying with the veggies, maybe the new guinea pig will teach him too.

[bpatters]

A new guinea pig should definitely help, particularly if it will already eat vegetables.

Chop the veggies really, really fine, and don't put much on at the beginning -- a teaspoonful or less. Start with lettuce, which doesn't have much of a smell, or with a fruit he might like.

[Kharkhar]

Yes the new guinea pig eats his veggies very well... they're currently still separated but eventually I hope this will help.

And the quarter of the oxbow vitamin C didn't really dissolve in water but it still worked beautifully, I just mixed it into a paste and fed it to Bailey in a syringe (all in one shot).

I'll chop the lettuce really fine and keep trying!

[Tunundary]

Maybe if chopping them small doesn't work you can try putting a bit of juice from a fruit or vegetable drizzled over them. Also if you have access to fresh herbs such as chives or dandelion stems you can mix those in with his hay.