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I’m at a bit of a loss right now, bb is always a good place to turn to so I’ll give it a go
I’m not exactly sure when Harvey lost his weight, but it was a week or two after he came to us. I contacted his previous owners (the rescue) and it turns out that it was a simple misunderstanding, the food he was getting once a day, he was meant to be getting TWICE a day. So I made the changes but a month later he is still scarily skinny. His weight is also very inconsistent, he might gain 100g one day, and lose all of it the next day. It’s just been going up and down for almost a month. I need to make it clear that throughout all this he is eating well, pooping.. ok (there’s some cecotropes every now and then), and is bouncing off the walls all the time, very active, very curious.
I have tried everything I can think of. He already gets quite a lot of pellets but if I raise the amount then there’s just cecotropes everywhere. Also, our pellets had more protein than the ones he was getting before, but I thought they were the same (long story) so he’s already getting more protein in the pellets. I tried giving him sunflower seeds, he ate one and decided he didn’t like them, then refused to eat any more. I’ve gone to a couple of my local pet stores looking for alfalfa, apparently the only place I could get alfalfa is in huge bales from the countryside ages away.
Right now his diet consists of :
In the morning : a quarter of an apple, 3 or 4 slices of carrot, and 1/8 of a cup of pellets.
In the evening: a quarter of an apple, 3 or 4 slices of carrot, a small slice of cabbage and 1/8 of a cup of pellets
Hear me out, obviously I know that he should NOT be getting these amounts of carrot and apple every day. But that was his diet before he came here, and in the process of changing his diet to leafy greens, that’s when he lost weight and I was recommended to stay on his old diet until he got the weight back. Still, I find it strange that he’s getting huge amounts of sugar everyday and he is still not gaining weight.
Any ideas?
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Just an update. He’s now completely weaned onto the new pellets and he’s getting 35g a day. Along with the same quantities of apple and carrot as before with a tiny bit of cabbage.
I ended up simply forgetting to weigh him, so I was weighing him every week or so. He was doing amazing! Consistently gaining weight with minimal drops.
He’s now 1400g. He feels much healthier and his stomach feels full, he’s not nearly as bony as he was before. I can tell that he’s still the tiniest bit underweight, but only a bit. I’d say his healthy weight is 1450g (which is strange, since Boos healthy weights is 1400g and she’s a bigger bun than he is).
He’s still pooping cecotropes, but a lot less than before, I’m not exactly sure what is causing the cecotropes. Should I just slowly switch him to his new diet and see what happens then?
I’m planning to now wean him off the carrot and apple and onto leafy greens. And reduce the amount of pellets he’s eating. He’s getting nearly 4 times as much that Boo gets in a day. Boo does get very little, 10g (1/8 of a cup) but it still feels a bit much with his small little body.
Do you think he’s ready to switch to greens? And any suggestions/ideas for the cecotropes would be appreciated
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