[Gpdd] [Health Care] Fecal Impactions
Penny Charlesworth
piggyfriends at tesco.net
Wed Nov 24 19:41:35 EST 2010
Elizabeth.
You are doing nothing wrong. It just happens that occasionally an older boar
will get impacted and needs his Slave's help to get rid of the impaction. It
is nothing to do with diet just a fact of life.
A few of my boars over the years have needed help in this area and it is
very easy to do it yourself and save the vet's fees. It can become a daily
job so you need to be able to help.
What happens is that the perianal sac, where the caecal poos collect,
becomes stretched with age and the poos form a solid mass inside. Sometimes,
when you pick up an impacted boar some of the normal poos fall out but the
caecals remain.
One of my boars, Rye, has this problem and it only takes me a few seconds
each day to keep him up and running. Sometimes an impacted boar only needs
cleaning out perhaps once a week but I always check on them every day just
to be sure. Rye is getting old and I empty him out morning and night with an
extra one during the day if I am at home.
You might want to wear rubber gloves to do this ( it depends how squeamish
you are ) and a peg for the nose could come in handy. Caecals do pong! We
never normally see them because the piggy eats them.
Hold your boy sitting up on one hand with his back to you and hold him under
his front paws with the other hand. You can feel the impacted lump quite
easily so, using the hand on which he is sitting put your thumb and
forefinger behind the lump and expel it into a receptacle. You could hold
him over the toilet. You can put some Vaseline or similar around the lump to
ease it out if necessary. I am left handed so I sit my boar on my left hand
and hold him up with my right. Experiment to see what is best for you and
your boy.
Another way to do this is to have him on his back and work out the lump with
a cotton bud but I always do it the first way.
You will become proficient at this very quickly and your boy will be
delighted with your prowess. Some boars will ingest some of the lump to
replace the lost vitamins so I leave the lump in their pen for a while. Rye
never does this so I do not bother but Truffle would always take some of
his.
When a boar first becomes impacted I give him a crushed Brewer's Yeast
tablet mixed with a little water ( in England I can buy these over the
counter at a pharmacy. This replaces the vitamins lost when a boar can no
longer reach his caecal poos to ingest them. After a while they usually eat
more of their dried food and then I stop the Brewer's Yeast.
I sometimes wonder if they are genetically predisposed to impaction as Rye's
father, Barley, needs the occasional clean out and his late brother, Cadbury
was the same. Bathtime is a good chance to give them a really good "tidy up"
when the sac can be cleaned with the shower hose ( without its spray ).
Good luck with Winkie. I hope that this helps but do post again if you need
more help.
Penny and the Piggyfriends.
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