[Gpdd] [HEALTH] Flashbang Fatbottom Has an UTI

pat schuett bunzella at yahoo.ca
Wed Jul 6 15:51:03 EDT 2011



Hi Jocelyn,
 
Believe me, I feel your pain --- Olivia, Apple and I have been through that nastiness a few times!  My first strategy now is to get lots of extra fluids into them, starting with the barley water recipe from Peter Gurney's books.  (If the piggie is not on antibiotics, I add some unsweetened cranberry juice to the barley water, but I believe they now think something in cranberry juice partially blocks the action of some antibiotics so I don't add the cranberry juice if the piggie is already on medication.)  It seems like the extra liquid helps to flush out the bad stuff and the barley water soothes the irritated membranes.  My piggies take it quite willingly from a syringe --- I use the ones made for giving oral medication to children, it's about 10cc with a nice long "nose" on it.
 
The other thing I've added to the routine of my two girls who have suffered from UTIs in the past is extra Vitamin C and some Potassium Citrate.  All of my piggies get 50mg of chewable Vitamin C per day, but Apple and Olivia (the UTI pigs) get a second 50mg dose, plus I break open a Potassium Citrate capsule and sprinkle the powder on the lettuce in their salads.  I also feed all of their greens soaking wet and washed with Brita filtered water (lower in calcium than local tap water); their drinking water is the reverse-osmosis filtered water I get from a machine in my local health food store.  I also have that chart of the veggie calcium values and calcium to phosphorus ratios http://www.guinealynx.info/diet_vegs.html from GuineaLynx almost memorized!
 
One big liquid-intake booster at this time of year that is cheap and plentiful is grass!  My piggies love it and will eat as much as I can provide --- it's basically just hay with the juice still in there, so it's a healthy low-calcium snack for them, especially served immediately after a thorough washing. 
 
Best wishes for a speedy recovery to Flashbang FatBottom, poor little guy!
 
                                                                                                                                             Pat S. & the Prairie Piggies


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