[Gpdd] [HEALTH] SCAMP nutrition and foot care

[Debbie Jones]

  As you may know, 5 of the Dolly Mixtures are now SCAMPs, including
  Soulage and Sable who are 6. I think I have mentioned before that
  they are steadily losing weight, and I wondered whether any SCAMP
  slaves out there could recommend and nutritional changes that might
  help to overcome this weight loss. Mine are fed on a mixture of
  Cavies Cuisine, Carrot and Cranberry Gertie Guinea Pig and Pets at
  Home colouring-free Nuggets, which is available 24 hours a day, plus
  hay, then twice a day they get a big plate of salad which includes
  endives, frisee lettuce, fennel, cauliflower stalks, celery,
  dandelions, rocket and fresh grass, plus always something else once a
  day like carrot, cucumber, apple, red pepper and/or banana. They
  almost always eat all their veggies - should I give them more until
  they always leave some? Would adding fattening stuff like oats or
  popcorn to their dry mix help, or would it just upset their
  digestion? They all eat very well - I've not really noticed a
  reduction in the amount they eat. It's just that they are not
  maintaining their weights. I have managed to buy, at great expense,
  some Oxbow Vitamin C tablets, but I'm afraid they don't like them!
  Would there be any point in crushing them and syringe feeding them in
  water, or would the distress of being syringe fed counteract any
  benefit from the vitamins?

  You may also remember I lost Scrabble, another SCAMP, to
  pododermatitis (bumblefoot) last year. He put up a brave fight, and
  we tried all sorts - Itrafungal orally, Chlorohexine soaks, Panalog
  ointment, Vetadine, Vaseline ... no matter what we tried, his feet
  just got more and more swollen until he could no long walk, and then
  he developed severe diarrhoea ..... then after his death the vet cut
  his feet open and decided he had bone cancer. It was a really
  horrible time for us all. Now I notice that all my SCAMPs are getting
  swollen front feet. Nowhere near as swollen as Scrabble's were - they
  are all girls and more petite than he ever was (he was a LAPS pig in
  his prime) - but one or two have little scabs on. There has been no
  bleeding or sign of pain, but ... I don't want any of them to go
  through what poor Scrabble endured. I know when I posted about him
  several of you sent me treatment suggestions, but Peter Gurney's
  "Piggy Potions" suggests that it won't kill them and there isn't
  really a cure, and my rodentologists have said the same to me - it
  would only kill them if they bled to death. I suspect that the
  condition is age-related - I think older humans can suffer with foot
  problems. With Scrabble, I did feel his feet got progressively worse
  the more I intervened, and particularly when I was soaking them twice
  a day. They are bedded on hay at present, which is changed
  frequently, and has newspaper underneath to absorb moisture. I did
  put Scrabble onto fleece, but I still had to give him hay to eat,
  obviously, and I found he would pull out all the hay to snuggle into,
  which obviously meant he walked on it with his front feet, so it
  rather defeated the object! I'd be reluctant to remove the girls'
  hay, as they do enjoy burrowing into it. As I say, the swollen feet
  do not seem to be worrying them, there is no lameness or anything
  like that - it is just worrying me, in case it develops into what
  Scrabble had.

  If SCAMP slaves can come up with any helpful suggestions/advice, I
  will ask Mikey to put it on the SCAMP website for all SCAMP slaves to
  read. All my SCAMPs are on it now. Incidentally, everyone keep their
  fingers crossed that Mikey will be given her two male foster pigs as
  a Valentines gift on Sunday!

  Debbie (and the 8 Dolly Mixtures)

"We patronize them for their incompleteness, 
for their tragic fate of having taken a form so far below ourselves. 
And therein we err, and greatly err. 
For the animal shall not be measured by man. 
In a world older and more complete than ours 
they move finished and complete, gifted 
with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, 
living by voices we shall never hear. 
They are not brethren, they are not underlings; 
they are other nations, caught with ourselves 
in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners 
of the splendour and travail of the earth". 
Henry Beston

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