[Gpdd] Health: dosage of metacam (meloxicam)

[Mieke Staaks]

Hi all,

First of all welcome to all new piggies and condolences to piggies and
their people who lost friends, and healing wheeks to all sick piggies out
there!

We have a question about the dosage of metacam (meloxicam, 0,5 mg/ml) for
guinea pigs.
Cookie seemed off for some time and around the time that Linn arrived she
lost about a 100gr, which is quite a lot for a piggy of 1100 gr(ammes).
Turns out Binky had mites, so everyone is treated for that, and Cookie,
like Raani, has a saddle back (where the spine curves a bit down instead of
up). I am starting to wonder how our pigs end up with saddle backs, is
Binky such a heavy clumsy boar accidentally hurting our girls? He is quite
a big boar at 1300 something grammes.

We are giving Cookie painkiller Metacam, but we are not sure about the
dosage.
We have the type for cats, and we used to give Raani a dose for a 2-5 kilo
cat. I think a 5kg cat dosage is 0,5ml (and cc). The vet tech tells me that
nowadays metacam is registered for guinea pigs and the official dosage is
now 10 kilo cat twice a day, which is about 1ml(cc), twice a day, so 2 ml
in total per day.
This is a lot higher then we used to give Raani, but probably she still had
the old dosage.
Does anyone know what the safe dosage is? Or if one of your pigs is on
metacam what dosage do they get?

Thank you for any replies,
Mieke
and the Guinygirlz Cookie, Linn and Boar Binky
-- 
"Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room"
Mary Schmich, 1997
(Source: http://256.com/gray/quotes/schmich.html)