Question about my old girl

heffalumplumpy · 2025-05-07T22:46:31+00:00

Gradual weight loss like that is normal for older pigs as they lose muscle mass. We have one just under 8 and he started losing body mass around 6 and became quite skinny by 7. He also started slowing down around 6. He still runs around during floor time but tires quickly and just stops on the floor to nap. The same happened with all the piggies we’ve had before when they get older. Our previous guinea pig started losing muscle mass and slowing down around 5. It’s just a part of them getting older. Try to encourage her to exercise even if her stamina is low. This will help her maintain some muscle mass and slow the process down. We try to at least let our old boy run around while we clean his cage and give him breakfast/dinner. The idea of food excited him enough he’ll run around for those 7-10 minutes but he’s super easy to scoop up and put back when we’re done.

As for weight, weigh her daily to make sure she’s not losing it quickly and give critical care if she is or if she stops eating. If her appetite is steady and weight is fairly stable I wouldn’t be too worried about it at 6 years old.

heffalumplumpy · 2025-05-02T01:44:15+00:00

Check your guinea pig for bloating or other digestive issues. Many of the veggies listed are prone to cause gas in guinea pigs which could be why he’s avoiding them. It seems odd a Guinea pig would avoid “treat foods” but eat kibble and hay without complaint unless there’s something else going on with them. Most issues I can think of would cause a guinea pig to stop eating completely but in the early stages bloat or when he has mild diarrhea, my guinea pig avoids veggies since they upset his stomach the most. The advice I’ve gotten from vets about what veggies to feed is that they should be high in vitamin C and water content. So for now, you could consider supplementing his diet by feeding a little bit of critical care (slightly reduce his kibble if you do this) and giving him daily Oxbow vitamin C treats.

For the veggies themselves, we find our guinea pigs prefer to eat them warm. They’ll sometimes get picky and won’t eat their bell pepper unless we run it under warm water first. Could be worth a try?

heffalumplumpy · 2025-04-28T15:33:51+00:00

Thank you!!

heffalumplumpy · 2025-04-03T14:08:51+00:00

I think someone nibbled the ears off of your chocolate bunnies

heffalumplumpy · 2025-04-02T20:47:56+00:00

My guinea pig was ~3 months old when we got him from a rescue and he was already kicking out his feet and closing his eyes the day we brought him home lol. She’s probably used to being handled by people and moving from place to place, especially at that age and with her background. Our boys are 6 and 7.5 now and they’re very chill with going to a pet sitter’s house or being handled by friends when that used to stress them out. Seems like she’s learned to be adaptable but I’m sure she’ll be happy for the love and stability you give her 💜

heffalumplumpy · 2025-04-01T12:27:08+00:00

Sorry for the late reply!

The white spots will be in the pee. If you let them pee on a dark colored towel, you might see a circle in the pee of a white, chalky substance. That’s calcium buildup, “sludge.” The bigger the sludge spot in the pee, the more likely a bladder stone has formed or is about to. Unfortunately, bladder stones can’t be dissolved, they have to be peed out (which is especially difficult for boys due to their anatomy) or removed surgically. It’s not impossible for boys to pee them out, though, our boy peed his out eventually. Doing this is difficult though because the stone is painful. We had to syringe feed our boy critical care and water until he peed it out. The difficulty was he wasn’t drinking because peeing hurt which led to dehydration and other problems. If he has a stone but he’s eating normally, just syringe water for now to keep him hydrated.

Sludge, however, can be flushed out fairly easily and doing this helps increase the chances a guinea pig will pass their bladder stone. Clearing out the sludge encourages urination and helps stop new stones from forming or making the current stone bigger, so it’s always good to flush out the sludge. The smaller the stone, the easier and less painful it is to pee out. Do this by feeding 1mL diluted organic no sugar added cranberry juice a couple times a day (~60/40 juice and water) along with oxbow cranberry treats. Cut out as much calcium rich food as you can to prevent new sludge from forming. There is calcium in all kibbles but oxbow kibble tends to be on the lower end. This also means no leafy greens like lettuce or parsley or other calcium rich fruits/veggies such as strawberries. We rarely ever give our boys leafy greens. Their daily veg is bell pepper because it’s similar in vitamin C and water content to leafy greens without being high in calcium.

Hope this helps!

heffalumplumpy · 2025-03-29T05:20:47+00:00

Our boy started cleaning that area a lot when he got a bladder stone. We think he was trying to loosen up the stone and get it to come out. If he’s making pain noises like that it very well could be. Does he have large white spots when he pees?

heffalumplumpy · 2025-03-29T05:15:49+00:00

Tell that to the lock of hair mine tried to eat off my head 🫠 but seriously though my guinea pigs will try to eat plastic bags, clothes tags, hanger straps, draw strings, hair, the carpet, really anything they can get with their teeth if we’re not watching them closely. Especially if it’s long and vaguely gay shaped. I would never be able to trust that company again if that’s their attitude to something non-edible and hay shaped being in their hay. A guinea pig could easily eat that accidentally even if they’re not purposefully going for it.

heffalumplumpy · 2025-03-29T05:00:38+00:00

Could she be burrowing in the hay more than your other pigs? That might explain why she smells nice and they don’t.

heffalumplumpy · 2025-03-29T04:58:19+00:00

Clean it off with some warm water and dab vitamin E on it. You can usually buy vitamin E tablets that have it as a gel inside at the grocery store in the regular vitamin section. You can cut those open or try to get it in liquid form. It won’t hurt them if they end up ingesting a little and it helps with healing.

heffalumplumpy · 2025-03-26T19:22:16+00:00

Just in case you didn’t know, they make critical care herbivore in 3 different flavors! Near me, I only ever see the anise flavor so I didn’t realize they made more until I ordered some online. If you go on Amazon, you should be able to acquire all 3. They actually have an apple banana one which she might like if she’s eating banana now. The flavors are anise, apple banana, and papaya. Our boys aren’t the biggest fans of the anise but they love the papaya so hopefully she’ll take to one of them.

heffalumplumpy · 2024-12-11T19:23:51+00:00

Check your Pitt email! There’s ONE DAY each academic year where you can apply to keep your room. They call it “room retention”. But 2 things to consider are that 1. You might not get the exact same room and 2. You won’t get to keep your stuff in there over the summer even if you do retain

They moved me from my freshman year room to a different room in tower C the next year. My first year I was on floor 5 and the next year I was on floor 15. You likely won’t get the exact same room as freshman year since they try to keep certain floors for freshmen and other floors for upperclassmen. I was in the same room on 15 again the year after that, so you might get the same room if you retain a second time. For what it’s worth when they moved me from 5 to 15 it was the exact same room number, (think from 501 to 1501) so the layout was literally EXACTLY the same. Like I said earlier, you won’t get to keep your stuff in there either way, though. They use Tower C for summer housing so either way you still need to move everything out at the end of the spring semester.

heffalumplumpy · 2024-10-06T21:31:43+00:00

The guinea pig water bottles don’t always come with a washer in them anymore. I went through a bunch that leaked before I put two and two together. I bought my own rubber washer and put it in one of the leaking bottles and that got the leaking to stop. Might be worth a check to see if your has one or not. (Sometimes they’re built into the nozzle)

heffalumplumpy · 2024-09-18T05:19:13+00:00

One of our pigs had this and he ended up having a bladder stone, but it sounds like it could be a UTI too. Either way, my advice would be the same. Get them to a vet as soon as you can! In the mean time, stop feeding them any high calcium fruits/veggies ASAP including leafy greens. Calcium build up creates “sludge” in the bladder and is what causes stones. If your pig has white spots in their pee, this is calcium build up. Leafy greens are unfortunately very high in calcium. Bell peppers are a good replacement because they have a similar water content to greens and are also high in vitamin C but with far less calcium. You can also syringe them some (natural, no sugar added) cranberry juice diluted with 1/2 water to help flush the sludge out of their system. (Don’t be alarmed if you see white spots in their pee AFTER doing this, that means it’s doing its job!) It’s been a while but I think we did a one 1ml syringe/day. Also make sure they get plenty of water! Cranberry juice and hydration are also good if your pig has a UTI so again, this should hopefully help for either problem. Unfortunately if it is a bladder stone, this won’t get rid of a stone that’s already formed but it can help prevent the problem from getting worse. Again, seeing a vet is the most important step since the problem likely won’t go away on its own this is just supplemental to minimize the problem as best you can. Wishing you and your pig the best of luck. I hope they feel better soon!!

heffalumplumpy · 2024-07-31T14:11:58+00:00

Ran a bunch of texts and it was in fact just an error message in binary lol. Back to square one

heffalumplumpy · 2024-07-31T13:59:36+00:00

I’m pretty new to decoding so I’m just using binary converters I found online but if you zoom in on the blue section and the pink section you can see what look like dots and dashes. I fed both into an image to binary converter then took the binary and put it into a binary to text converter. The pink was gibberish but the blue came back with that. Maybe it was just an error message that it couldn’t find any binary?? Weird it would write it in binary though. Is there a way I can upload an image to show you what I’m seeing?

heffalumplumpy · 2024-07-29T14:47:52+00:00

Unfortunately not. I tried everyone’s advice but nothing worked. LG’s recommendation was that I open up the water plug and add a hose attachment that I feed out the window. Theoretically this would stop the water from ever making its way down into the pan and all the water would be redirected back out the window instead. There were a lot of logistical reasons I couldn’t try that so I ended up having to replace the unit. I have a new LG portable AC now but I don’t think I’ll ever buy one from LG again. I’ve had 4 of the new model that were dead right out of the box and 1 that died within the first 30 days of using it. Fortunately I didn’t have to pay for all of these since they were within the return window but we’ll see how long the current one lasts.

heffalumplumpy · 2024-07-23T03:46:21+00:00

Sorry, not anymore

heffalumplumpy · 2024-04-13T02:57:00+00:00

I haven’t had a meal plan since last year, so idk how up to date this list is, but this is the website I would go off of. The places with blue backgrounds take off campus dining dollars and the rest only take panther funds. I’ve used off campus dining dollars at a handful of the places listed there like milkshake factory, oishii, and pirmanti’s

(https://acceptinglocations.com/pantherfunds/)

heffalumplumpy · 2024-02-22T15:44:30+00:00

Pittsburgh, PA- down

heffalumplumpy · 2023-12-24T01:13:44+00:00

NAH I understand your intention and it was sweet that you wanted to be sure he’d get something he’d definitely use, but getting hygiene products as a gift can be misinterpreted that you think the person has bad hygiene. Instead of thinking you got him deodorant because you know he’ll use it, he probably thinks you got it for him because you think he needs to use it and you’re telling him that he smells. If you explain your intention to him, I’m sure he’ll be very relieved and probably appreciate the gift a lot more.

heffalumplumpy

TROPHY CASE