[Gpdd] [HEALTH] Chakalaka keeps losing weight

scalabro3 at cfl.rr.com scalabro3 at cfl.rr.com
Sat Feb 12 22:08:28 EST 2011


Hi. Our little guy, Chakalaka, has been having a rough time with his health lately, and the vet and I aren’t sure what is going on. He will be two years old in September. He’s a silkie/sheltie with very long fur and ruby red eyes. Other than his droopy lower eyelids, which he’s had since he was very young and the bad case of ringworm that he had when we first took him home, he’s been very healthy.  When we first noticed the droopy lower eyelids, we took him to the vet, who said that the eye problem was genetic (pea eye) and should not be a concern. 

I think that his problems may have started in mid-January. I was very ill with the flu and my husband was taking care of him and the rest of the herd. When I was well enough to go see the fuzzy guys, I found that Chakalaka’s whole back end was soaked with urine. I gave him a bath, removed the matted fur from his back end, and he seemed to be better after that. Two weeks ago, his weight started to drop.

He spent the day at the vet two weeks ago, and they couldn’t find anything wrong with him except for very foul smelling urine. He refused to give them a sample, so we treated him for a week with Baytril for a suspected UTI, and he seemed to be feeling better. While he was at the vet, she trimmed his teeth in the front, and checked the back teeth to see if there was a problem that could have caused the weight loss. Other than his slightly long front teeth, she didn’t find a problem.

He returned to the vet a week later and his weight was increasing. We concluded that he must have just been stressed out from dominance issues with his roommate who was keeping him from eating as much as he wanted and that the Baytril had worked.  Just to be sure, we scheduled another appointment a week later to check his weight again on a scale a little more sophisticated than my kitchen scale.

Last Wednesday, I weighed him, and he was almost back to his weight before all of this began, so I called the vet Thursday morning to cancel his Friday appointment, confident that he was back to normal again.

When I got up Friday morning, his bottom was wet again, and his weight was down from 3.24 lbs to 3.09 lbs.  I weighed him three times than morning and two other pigs to make sure that my scale wasn’t broken, but all the other guys weighed what they were supposed to, except for Chakalaka.

So, I took him to the vet Friday morning. She checked his teeth again in case she missed something the first time, and she did blood work.  Nothing too out of the ordinary was found in the blood work results that were back on Friday afternoon. The results of the second round of blood work were not ready when I met with the vet Friday afternoon.

Today, he is having problems eating on his own.  I’m feeding him critical care every few hours. He picks up food, but then he drops it.  He seems to try to eat more after I give him his critical care, and this evening, he has eaten a few pieces of hay on his own, so I’m encouraged a little bit, but still concerned.

The vet thinks that he may have Fatty Liver Syndrome and that I should keep feeding him as much as he will eat.  The thyroid and cholesterol results hadn’t come in on Friday when their office closed.  I asked their office to fax me the results today and they said T4 = 3.2 and Chol <20*.  I don’t know what that means.  The vet is out of the office until Monday, and I’m sure that she’ll explain it to me when she gets back.

Thyroid doesn’t make sense to me though. I know people with underactive and overactive thyroids.  It would make sense if it were an overactive thyroid if he were eating all the time, but not gaining weight, but he’s just not eating that much, and today almost nothing that I’m not making him eat with a syringe.  Underactive thyroid would explain the lethargy that we’re seeing today, but I’m not sure how that would play into what has been going on for the last few weeks.

The vet gave him an ultrasound exam and found no evidence of stones. We’ve switched his water supply from Britta filtered water to Wal-Mart reverse osmosis water that Ann has recommended.  We are looking into getting a filtration system for the whole house.  Since we switched from shredded newspaper to fleece, we’ve noticed that several of our piggies have sludgy urine.  In December we stopped using fleece for Chakalaka and his roommate because their pen was always stinky. We assumed that it was some type of teenage male marking going on, but in retrospect, that may have been the start of whatever this is.

I’ll post the results of the blood test after my signature so anyone with a voice reader or those who aren’t interested in the WBC, HCT, etc. won’t have to read through it.

If anyone has any idea what might be going on, or any suggestion on what I should do next, I’d sure appreciate it.

Thanks for your concern and help!

ME in New Smyrna Beach with Chakalaka, Baby DJ, Donovan, Reese, Puffy, Cocoa Puff, Twinkie, and Ghirardelli in our home and Dillon Forever in our Hearts

Blood Results:

DATE:   02/11/2001
TIME:  15:57:08

WBC = 6.0 103/ul (Normal 5.5 – 19.5)
LYM = 2.1 103/ul (Normal 1.0 – 7.0)
MONO= 0.7 103/ul (Normal 0.2 – 1.0)
GRAN= 3.2 103/ul (Normal 2.8 – 13.0)
LYM%= 36.5% (Normal 0.0 – 99.9)
MON%= 9.1% (Normal 0.0 – 99.9)
GRA%=54.4 (Normal 0.0 – 99.9)

HCT= 35.4% (Normal 25.0 – 45.0)
MCV = 73.2 fl (Normal 39.0 – 50.0)
RDWa= 54.5 fl (Normal 20.0 – 35.0)
RDW%=16.8% (Normal 14.0 – 18.5)
HGB = 13.0 g/dl (Normal 8.0 – 15.0)
MCHC= 36.7 g/dl (Normal 31.0 – 38.5)
MCH= 26.9 pg (Normal 12.5 – 17.5)
RBC= 4.83 106/ul (Normal 5.0 – 11.0)
PLT= 398 103/ul (Normal 200 – 500)
MPV = 6.2 fl (Normal 8.0 – 12.0)
WBC Time 9.4
RBC Time: 13.6
Asp. Time: 0.5

Thyroid Blood Work

T4 3.2 UG/DL
CHOL <20* MG/DL
QC OK
HEM 2+, LIP 1+, ICT 0
ALB 5.7 G/DL
ALP 33 U/L
ALT 45 U/L
AMY 1425 U/L
TBIL 0.2 MG/DL
BUN 16 MG/DL
CA++ 11.7 MG/DL
PHOS 5.0 MG/DL
CRE 0.7 MG/DL
GLU 193 MG/DL
NA+ 136 MMO/L
K+ 3.8 MM0/L
TP 5.5 G/DL
GLOB 0.0 G/DL







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