[Gpdd] [HEALTH] Help with Guinnea Pig not eating or drinking

[warmbreath at comcast.net]

ME  has great suggestions for syringe feedings, I would like to add one 
more, and that is to increase it's use as a bonding exercise by starting 
soon after you get the new pig. Piggies are wonderful at looking to their 
leaders for training, what and how to eat are high on that list, and you 
will become the boss pig of your herd or singleton or you may share the 
duties with the pig who has earned the boss pig rights in your group. This 
is the ideal situation as you demonstrate to the new pig by giving the boss 
pig a couple syringes of something good and then offering one to the new 
pig. As he starts getting the idea be sure to switch foods and drinks so he 
learns to accept the pellet mash, Vit C, probiotic. Also teach them to eat 
small pieces of banana, one nubbin every few days because its very sweet, 
but when they are sick you can tuck a small pill in the banana and you are a 
long way towards your goal of getting either your one or your many pigs to 
learn this important survival skill. That way when somebody gets sick the 
stress part of both of you trying to learn to syringe while the piggie is 
very sick is removed, it's old hat.

This works and it works great, just remember, with piggies we keep the sugar 
food to a minimum, they like the bitter stuff allot. I taught one to eat 
lemons, and he liked the rind too, so there's a vit C fruit avail year round 
although most of my piggies would take tart oranges, only the one liked 
lemons, but I did have to show him first, and he trusted me, tried it, and 
liked it.

A perfect trainer pig  in your group will be a sow with cystic hormone 
disease because it revs up her metabolism so high she would literally 
wrestle the syringe out of my hands and try to make it work herself. So 
While I had her syringe feeding was the hi point of the whole herds day. As 
a side note, sows with disease drink much more than a normal pig and one 
night she ran out of water and wheeked me awake to get her more, she even 
pretended to want to cuddle so I would tend to her, but she normally was not 
a snuggle pig, so as soon as the water bottle arrived she wanted nothing to 
do with me, she just wanted to suck that bottle. The level of thought she 
had to get her way was astounding.

Another trick the herd picked while I had her is that as soon as I made the 
round to pick up all the bottles to clean and fill, all the piggies would 
start to eat pellets anticipating nice fresh water which most pigs strongly 
prefer to stale water and gummy water spouts. So I had to be very careful 
with this group to not soak the bottles as they were busy filling up on 
pellets while I got the fresh water and any delay would mean they could get 
impacted from not having enough water if I delayed. Oh! how I loved that 
little girl, gone 10 years now.  See ya on the flip side, Jetma!   Sandy and 
Sammy, who is sending stories.