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Diarrhea Constant soft poops. Smellier than I remembered. Are x-rays useful?

mikkysaur

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Hi everyone! This is my previous post about my girl Ginny (not directly relevant to this post). I believe it is too old to be edited so I’ll link it here. https://www.guineapigcages.com/forum/threads/121616-Left-Eye-Getting-Worse?highlight=


I was wondering if you guys have experienced this before and if there’s any advice you could give me? I am taking Ginny to the vet on Thursday.


A few months ago she was on antibiotics for a respiratory infection and her gut didn’t seem to recover. She used to have diarrhea, and now it’s just (stinky) soft poops. They’re not super soft anymore, but they’ll sometimes get mushed and stick everywhere (for example if she’s been sleeping in her bed and they pile up overnight, they’ll stick to everything).


I’ve been regularly giving her benebac probiotics (as advised by the vet), and taking her off veggies until her poops hardened, then reintroducing veggies into her diet slowly only to have the poop soften up again... And they smell worse than I remember before the antibiotics even when hardened up a bit.


It’s been months already. Even though Ginny popcorns, zooms around, and has a healthy appetite... I’m scared. I want to do everything I can to help her. Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I’m seeing the vet soon! Here are my questions:


1. What else should I ask the vet to look into besides the antibiotics messing up Ginny’s gut flora? So far I have GI stasis, bloating, and fecal impaction (if that even occurs for sows).


2. Would requesting an abdominal x-ray be pointless? She had 3 x-rays taken before and I don’t want to expose her to radiation needlessly.


3. If an x-ray should be taken, what should I look out for? What does bloat and stasis look like on an x-ray?


Thank you in advance!
 

bpatters

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Sorry she's having problems.

I don't know that an x-ray would help. It would show gas, or opaque material, but be useless for diagnosing an infection.

Smelly poop is an indication of two common possibilities -- a parasite infection, or cecal poops. If the poop is soft, greenish, and poorly formed, it's probably the cecal poop that she would normally eat. In that case, the question would be why she isn't eating them. Otherwise, there may be a parasitic infection. Giardia is occasionally found in animals that live outside, but rare in guinea pigs.

However, if things clear up completely when you take her off veggies, that would suggest the problem isn't an infection.

When you add the veggies back, how do you do it? The way to determine if one of them is causing the problem, is to pick one veg and give that one only for 48-72 hours, and see what happens. If the poop is still firm, add one more the same way. Continue until you find one that causes the soft poop, and just don't feed it ever again.

You can also leave her off veggies for a couple of weeks and let her tummy settle down. I've known of a few guinea pigs that had GI problems that were never again able to eat veggies in the same quantity as before they were ill. A couple couldn't even tolerate lettuce.

What exactly are you feeding her? Which pellets, and how many? Which veggies, and how many of each? Any fruit?
 

mikkysaur

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Thank you so much for your reply! I didn’t think about the possibility of a parasitic infection and I’ll bring it up with the doctor.

The longest I’ve gone without feeding her veggies was 1 week. I didn’t know that you could go longer without giving them veggies, so I’ll bring that up with the vet too!

Each day, I’ll give unlimited hay, 1/2 cup of “oxbow essentials adult guinea pig food” pellets (both the girls don’t really eat their pellets), 1-2 oxbow vitamin c tablets, and 1 gram benebac probiotics every other day. After about 3 days without veggies her poop would firm up just a bit (soft enough to be flattened when Ginny walks over them, but most of the poops keep their shape now). Then I’d wait 2-3 more days and it wouldn’t firm up any more beyond that). I’d go back to just giving her 1 piece green leaf lettuce for a couple of days and boom, mushy poop each day.
 

bpatters

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Start with a smaller piece of something other than green leaf lettuce -- red leaf lettuce, or Bibb, and see if that makes a difference. Also stop the vitamin C tablets. That shouldn't be enough to cause problems, but vitamin C can cause diarrhea, and if her gut is upset, it might be the cause.
 
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