[Gpdd] [Health] - What Am I Doing Wrong???

[Julia Porter]

Please help me!  What am I doing wrong with my pigs?  My first 4 pigs were healthy, hardly ever visited the vets and lived til they were about 4 and a half.
 
You may remember I put an announcement 3 weeks ago about my beautiful boy, Timothy.  If you don't remember, I found a huge lump under his chin, which the vet recommended he had cut out - although he survived the surgery itself, the trauma was too much and he passed away the next evening.  He was only 15 months old.  Well, tonight, I take out my remaining 4 girls to clean them out and discover that Iolanthe now has a lump under her chin, she is only just 2 years old.  I am so scared - I know I am going to have to take her to the vet, but I am terrified that I am going to go through the same thing I did with Timothy, i.e. have her operated on and then lose her.  It's too late to take her tonight, so we'll go tomorrow, but I feel like there's a death sentence hanging over her head.  If the vet recommends, should I get it cut out and risk her dying?  I guess so.  But it's too soon to lose another one of my babies.
 
Apart from the scared feeling, I can't help wondering why and if it's something I'm doing wrong, as I say my first 4 pigs were healthy nearly the whole time.  They lived in pairs in 2 separate hutches - these 4 (were 5) live in a big C&C cage, have plenty of veggies and fruit and are cleaned regularly.  I haven't changed my keeping habits, apart from the cage.  There are no rescues here, so I've had to get them all from pet shops and they've all come from different pet shops, so they're not related.  It just seems so odd to me that both Timothy and Iolanthe have developed lumps in the same place within such a short space of time and wonder if it's my fault.  Any ideas?
 
Thanks for listening
 
Julia, Belinda, Iolanthe, Cordelia & Persephone
remembering Tabitha, Charlotte, Perdita, Ophelia, Delilah and Timothy at the bridge

		
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