If your guinea pig is ill, and refuses to eat foods or drink water by itself, you will need to hand feed it with a syringe or similar tool, which can save its life. The most important first sign of trouble is your guinea pig refusing to eat its favorite veggies. This might be one the signs your guinea pig is sick.
If the guinea pig shows no interest in food within 6 to 12 hour period, and you notice the poop is not where it usually is in usual quantities, first see your vet ASAP.
The following instructions are assuming that you have visited the vet and that he/she had done everything it needs to be done before hand feeding your guinea pig.
Basic instructions on how to use a syringe for hand feeding your guinea pig:
- 1mL = 1cc
- A healthy, grown up guinea pig eats approximately:
- 6 grams dry food per 100 grams of body weight
- 10 to 40 ml water per 100 grams of body weight
- these are not absolute rules, but guidelines
- Several feeding sessions per day are recommended, 3-6 or more
- Be calm and present. The mistakes are VERY easy to make if you are not paying attention.
- Do not do this if you are in a hurry. Do not think that this is a “thing to do” hastily, and than running of to do other important things. I can’t stress enough how important it is to dedicate yourself to this process, even if it is repeated every day, few times a day. One mistake is enough. Take your time. Allocate your time.
- We are talking here about the syringe WITHOUT THE NEEDLE of course. Check the picture on the beginning of this page.
- Use the syringe on the corner of the guinea pig’s mouth – not on the center of the mouth. If you accidently shot water in the center of the mouth, guinea pig could suffocate and die in a matter of seconds.
- Feed SMALL doses at a time (less than ½ mL). Watch and observe what happens. Is your guinea pig chewing? If he/she is chewing, that is a sign of absorbing the food and/or water, so a good thing.
- STOP feeding if the guinea pig stops CHEWING.
- Guinea pig’s mouth can hold about 1/3 of a 1 mL syringe’s content at one time, DO NOT GIVE MORE than about 1/4 to 1/3 of 1 mL at a time.
- If your guinea pig is squirming and uncooperative, you might need to hold it by its head, in between the eyes and the edge of the mouth, you’ll need to try it to get it, in that way the guinea pig slightly opens its mouth. If possible, there should be two of you, one holding the guinea pig, the other feeding it.
- Syringes can be evil, sneaky tools. When you are slowly pressing them, they might get temporarily stuck, and when you press harder to compensate they suddenly release lots more of the content than you needed to squeeze out. Be very careful, don’t push the syringe harder if they get jammed when feeding the guinea pig! In that way you might suffocate your pet with more contents than the piggy can manage. If it gets stuck, press it somewhere else, to release the clogging contents, until it feels smooth again.
- Remember, fhe final goal of hand feeding is to get your guinea pig back to its normal eating routine. In the process, feel free to offer “normal” food occasionally (even favorites and treats, and observe the response), and make sure that there is “normal” food and water always available in the guinea pig’s living area.
What to feed a guinea pig through a syringe?
- You need a powdery, complete supplementary guinea pig food. This powder needs to be dissolved in water to make a paste. The density of the paste needs to be such that it can be used by the syringe without clogging the syringe, but also not too watery.
- If having a digestive issues (there is no poop), guinea pig can also be feeded olive oil in small quantities (about ½ mL per feeding), preferably before feeding the main supplementary food.
- For guinea pig digestive issues, Your vet might also prescribe probiotics. Use as instructed by the vet.
- If you noticed that your guinea pig is not drinking the water by itself, you also need to feed it water through the syringe. You can also drop a few drops of vitamins in the water (vitamin C is the most important one). Be ESPECIALLY CAREFUL with the water. Corner of the mouth only, SMALL dosages (less than ½ mL) at the time, watch if the guinea pig is chewing (a good thing), or gagging (a bad thing).
What to expect?
T
here are various cases of scenario development, depending on the specific ailment that your guinea pig suffers from and lots of other factors. Some of the possibilities:
- Your guinea pig recovers in a manner of days and starts eating/drinking on its own.
- Your guinea pig recovers very slowly, in weeks, but it manages to recover.
- Your guinea pig recovers very slowly, in weeks, but then a complete relapse happens, symptoms might seem worse, and the recovery begins from the scratch. From there, guinea pig might recover, but it might also pass away.
- Your guinea pig is developing worse symptoms within days or hours, and passes away relatively (too) quickly.
Unfortunately, every one of these scenarios are possible.
Personal notes
These next paragraphs might seem depressing and hard, but as a guinea pig owner, you should be aware of all the situations and options you might encounter with your pets. Of course, you should enjoy every healthy moment with them without thinking of “what if”, but being aware of the possible situations described below might make you more rational, calm and prepared if ever facing those types of situations.
Guinea pigs are small animals, they can conceal their symptoms from you, and these facts alone make it hard for them to recover under your care, if they are seriously ill. For possible prevention, you can weigh your pets to ensure that their health is relatively unchanged as discussed in our Guinea Pig Health page.
If the symptoms look grave, be prepared for the worst, but try not to panic. Panic and fear only makes thing worse.
If you have a good vet which has experience with guinea pigs, take the guinea pig there. Stay calm in the traffic. Few seconds or minutes probably won’t make much of a difference.
If it seems that your guinea pig is dying, and it seems to be happening quickly, ensure him/her the quiet attention and comfort in its last moments; avoid hysteria by all means. It is a natural course of life and death cycle, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
If your vet is suggesting euthanasia, inspect his/hers arguments and decision thoroughly, and make sure the vet has not come to that option lightly. I’m afraid that this is the only advice I can give you in this impossibly hard scenario. When faced with it, you decide on how to proceed. If your guinea pig is suffering for hours, and there are no available methods of healing, this might be one of the hardest decisions you’ve ever faced.
If you did a mistake in force-feeding that seemed to led to the death of your guinea pig, remember – if you have followed the instructions from this page – you probably couldn’t do better, or you just have accelerated inevitable by a few minutes or hours. Don’t blame yourself. In most cases, if you are a dedicated owner, there is not much more that you could do. Even most of the vets can’t do much when the symptoms are severe. Let it go; you probably did your best, with the best intentions possible.
A good read on the subject is also covered here: http://www.guinealynx.info/handfeeding.html,
and here: http://www.guinealynx.info/tips.html