[Gpdd] Health: Bladder Stones and Chanca Piedra

[pat schuett]

Hello everyone,
I was planning to post a nice chatty update message, telling you all how great all the Prairie Pigs are doing, but that will have to wait for a bit!
Yesterday my piggie Horatio was diagnosed with a new bladder stone.  He had one stone over a year ago, but that was successfully removed without surgery and subsequent ultrasounds and x-rays appeared to show that no new ones were forming.  I have had several piggies with stones before but the others were all sows and it's much easier to deal with stones in sows with their larger urethras.
Since my first stone piggy, I had changed almost everything about my piggy care --- I feed only low calcium veggies now, only timothy or orchard grass hay and the lowest calcium pellets I can find (they get only about a tablespoon of pellets a day).  They get potassium citrate on their morning salads, and only distilled water with a bit of apple cider vinegar added.  Their cages are cleaned twice a day to minimize contact with soiled bedding.  I recently reduced their daily Vitamin C dose to about 30 mg after reading that excess Vitamin C supplements in humans had been linked to kidney stone formation.  It does seem that the stones are forming more slowly but I have certainly not eliminated them. sadly.
I remember reading about Chanca Piedra; I thought it was on the GPDD, but I just tried a search in the archives and could not find anything.  Does anyone else remember this, or has anyone had personal experience with it, good or bad?  I have been able to purchase a bottle of Chanca Piedra capsules, 500mg, which says it is prepared from 10:1 extract but am afraid to use it without knowing the dosage. The brand name is Organika.
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!!!
Pat and the Prairie Pigs