Background:
About 5 months ago one of my guinea pigs (she was about 9 months' old then) was treated for ear infection. We found her one evening with her head tilted one side and she stayed lying down, with her eyes shifty. We rushed her to the nearest available vet (our usual vet was not around), and he diagnosed her with ear infection and prescribed antibiotics and some supplements. During the follow up check up she seems better, although her head is still tilted, her appetite is poor and she continued to lose weight. We had to maintain her weight with critical care and a bit of alfalfa pellets mixed into the timothy ones; she's refusing most of the fruits and vegetables she used to love, and her hay is hardly touched. The vet asked us to continue with the supplement (I need to go back and look for the name of it, it's one of the B vitamins for the nerves) for another month and return for another follow up then. I asked him to look at the teeth to see why she's not eating, but he said it's normal.
I brought her back to our usual trusted vet, she found that her teeth has overground and that her jaw is misaligned, most likely while the head was tilted. She got the teeth filed, and taught us how to massage her to ease both the head tilt and jaw. Currently she's hardly tilting, the jaw is still a bit misaligned but has been improving. We've been going back to file her teeth once a month for 3 months now, but she's still refusing hay even after the teeth filing, so likely it'll overgrow again. She always seems hungry, but all she eats are the pellets, critical care made into a paste, and a bit of selective vegetables.
I've tried all the Oxbow varieties (she used to love the orchard grass) to see if she'll eat any. The only other few hay options I could find in Malaysia are not very appealing (yellowish, dry, and hard...). She still loves blueberries, I tried slathering it on a few strands of hay but she just took the blueberry pieces and ignored the hay. I've also been cutting up the grass hay into tiny pieces and mixed it into her critical care paste (along with a bunch of wheat grass and a bit of cilantro, also chopped into tiny pieces), that she finishes. But I think she needs the long strands to grind down her teeth?
Are they any suggestions on how I can try to coax her into start eating some hay?
About 5 months ago one of my guinea pigs (she was about 9 months' old then) was treated for ear infection. We found her one evening with her head tilted one side and she stayed lying down, with her eyes shifty. We rushed her to the nearest available vet (our usual vet was not around), and he diagnosed her with ear infection and prescribed antibiotics and some supplements. During the follow up check up she seems better, although her head is still tilted, her appetite is poor and she continued to lose weight. We had to maintain her weight with critical care and a bit of alfalfa pellets mixed into the timothy ones; she's refusing most of the fruits and vegetables she used to love, and her hay is hardly touched. The vet asked us to continue with the supplement (I need to go back and look for the name of it, it's one of the B vitamins for the nerves) for another month and return for another follow up then. I asked him to look at the teeth to see why she's not eating, but he said it's normal.
I brought her back to our usual trusted vet, she found that her teeth has overground and that her jaw is misaligned, most likely while the head was tilted. She got the teeth filed, and taught us how to massage her to ease both the head tilt and jaw. Currently she's hardly tilting, the jaw is still a bit misaligned but has been improving. We've been going back to file her teeth once a month for 3 months now, but she's still refusing hay even after the teeth filing, so likely it'll overgrow again. She always seems hungry, but all she eats are the pellets, critical care made into a paste, and a bit of selective vegetables.
I've tried all the Oxbow varieties (she used to love the orchard grass) to see if she'll eat any. The only other few hay options I could find in Malaysia are not very appealing (yellowish, dry, and hard...). She still loves blueberries, I tried slathering it on a few strands of hay but she just took the blueberry pieces and ignored the hay. I've also been cutting up the grass hay into tiny pieces and mixed it into her critical care paste (along with a bunch of wheat grass and a bit of cilantro, also chopped into tiny pieces), that she finishes. But I think she needs the long strands to grind down her teeth?
Are they any suggestions on how I can try to coax her into start eating some hay?