Senior chinchilla having trouble eating after recovery from choking

Hello,

I have been coming to this forum for years, but only now am posting since I have a serious issue and need advice. I apologize in advance for the long post.

I own two 14yr old chinchillas (I had a third, but she passed about 2 yrs ago). They live in a large 4 ft tall cage and generally lead happy chinchilla lives. One of them, Miss Piggy, a very healthy and feisty chinchilla, started to act "off" yesterday (Sunday). She wanted to be in the corner of the cage and just wasn't her normal curious self. I monitored her throughout the day and around 6pm noticed that she was very lethargic, was making retching motions, and had a lot of foam around her mouth. Recognizing this as a probable choking issue, I rushed her to an emergency vet (after finding one that said they treated chinchillas) and they gave her oxygen which perked her up a bit. After that they did a sedated oral exam and found nothing. They put her back on oxygen to help her come out of the sedation and she perked up like normal. They then took her off oxygen and observed her and she seemed to be pretty much fine. They brought her to me and she ran around the exam room like a maniac (like normal), pooping and otherwise being ok. The vet believed that she was choking on something, but somehow managed to pass it (perhaps the sedation allowed her to relax and the food slid down).

I took her home with instructions to not give her food for 6 hrs and only allow her water until then. I took out all of the platforms and left her and her sister to spend the night in their hut on the bottom of their cage with just water. In the morning, she seemed ok, but she was very, very hungry. I thought about what I could give her that would be easy to swallow, so I tried giving her a tiny piece of a raisin. She grabbed it, ate it like normal, but then immediately went back into the choking actions. She retched hard for about 20 seconds and then I saw her bring it back up. She then went into her hut with her ears down, etc. She was breathing though. I called around but no vet could see her until Wed morning. A half hour later, she's back to semi-normal again. I took the day off so I could stay home and watch her.

I waited another 5 hrs and by then she was really hungry. Normally they come for treats, but she was coming over when I opened the cage and frantically searching my hand for anything that was food. (BTW - I fed her sister separately). I thought again about what I could give her that would be easy to swallow. I took to the forums and found Oxbow critical care which I have overnighted to my house (arrives Tuesday so I can give it to her tomorrow evening). However, she had to eat. So, I took some alfalfa "dust" and put that in my hand. Miss Piggy went after it and ate a few bites and then went back to the retching motions but this time not so bad and she seemed to recover pretty quickly. She didn't seem to be bringing it up, but she definitely was having trouble swallowing.

Back to forums for guidance and I saw another post suggesting to feed pure pumpkin. I mixed that with water to make watery pumpkin goo. After feeding her some off my fingers, she took to the tiny amount I put into a dish with gusto. After eating for a little bit and seeming to be normal, she started to have issues swallowing and made some of the retching motions again, but this time not quite so bad and she seemed to get over it fast. She went over and drank a lot of water and now she seems to be acting fairly normal.

So, she can't get to a vet until Wed morning, which is over a day away. She has an appetite but seems to have trouble eating normally and swallowing. I'm confused, since she drinks ok, so she obviously isn't choking, and she seemed to tolerate the pumpkin fairly well, but still with some issues that make me concerned to give her too much.

What can I do to help her get over this? Any ideas what may be causing this? Is it just residual irritation from the choking? The vet did say her soft palate was pretty irritated, but she seemed to think that 5-6hrs would be enough time to recover and it's been almost a full day.

Please help.

First, the pumpkin shouldn't be straight pumpkin. It should be mixed in with the critical care or Essentials for Life. On its own, it's too much.

Did the vet give you anything for pain? If she's really irritated, some Metacam might help out with that so that it doesn't hurt for her to swallow.

You mentioned he did an oral exam. Did he do x-rays? An oral exam isn't going to show if there is something lodged in her throat. There have been instances where chins have pieces of hay stabbing them in the back of the mouth, so the throat isn't out of the realm of possibility. Either an endoscopy or an x-ray would be needed to get a really good view of that and be sure, though I am not sure that an endoscopy could be done on a chin. An x-ray can though.

Thanks for the information.

The vet originally discussed the possibility of needing an x-ray when we first came in, but after she seemed to recover from oxygen and the oral exam, she thought the issue had resolved itself.

I have overnighted critical care and should get that later today. This morning, she seemed ok, had a dust bath and so forth. I gave her some more of the watered down pumpkin but she really didn't eat much before she started to have issues swallowing. She seemed to recover again ok, but it is becoming concerning how much time is passing without her eating normally. She still seems interested in new things when I swap out some things in her cage which is encouraging, but she clearly needs to eat more.

I will feed her the critical care tonight and see how that goes. She goes to the vet tomorrow morning.

Does she seem to have any weakness on any of her limbs, does she move around normally? Can you pull her lips back from the front of her incisors and look, is there any wetness on the incisor surfaces or gums? How did the feeding of the critical care go? The choking motion can come from two things, teeth points or she is nauseated, at 14 is would not be uncommon for her to have a few points that need to be trimmed, the down side is the older chins can have issues with being put under to have a look-not to be a debbie downer, but if you have her put under be prepared for it to go wrong, its a double edge sword, you have to have it diagnosed but the journey to get there may go wrong.

She moves fine. I checked her out and then the emergency vet did too. She hops and scratches in her dust bath and other than the swallowing issue, she is back to normal. She can't sustain this much longer though without eating normally.

The critical is being delivered later today, so tonight I will water it way down and try to get it into her. She can drink water without the swallowing issues, so I just need to make sure I go slow and let her get it down. Tomorrow she goes to the vet in the morning.

Make sure the vet gives her subcu hydration tomorrow. Dried up stuff in the tummy is never a good thing. You want to keep stuff fluid and moving and the subcu fluids are cheap, relatively painless, and fast.

I have to admit, I thought along the same lines as Dawn mentioned with the teeth, but the foaming at the mouth isn't something I would have normally thought of as a symptom of teeth issues, so I didn't mention it. You do need to be careful with anesthesia, especially because of her age, but at this point you are at 6 of one and half dozen of another area. You need to find out what is going on, so the need outweighs the risk.

I hope you'll keep us posted. This could be a valuable learning thread for others.

Update: I got the critical care and since she seems to be able to drink water ok, I mixed it up like a very thin soup. I gave it to her in a little dish and she came over right away. She's still clearly very hungry. I let her lick some off my finger and then she dug in. She was more or less just licking it up since it was so thin and chewing it a little. After a little bit she withdrew from the dish and made some of the some swallowing motions she did with the pumpkin (different from the retching motions before when she was choking, like she's trying to swallow but it's hard). After a few moments she went back to the dish. The cycle continued like this for a few times. Eat, withdraw, swallow, repeat.

I am splitting the food up into 4 feedings but the extra water is adding to the volume so I'm just taking it slow. She's very hungry. I tried feeding her from a syringe so that her neck wasn't bent over the dish thinking that would help. She ate readily from the tube but still had the same swallowing issues. It's somewhat odd that she can apparently drink water without issue, but even the small difference between this soup and water triggers this swallowing reaction. Still, this is encouraging that she is getting nourishment. The vet is tomorrow (Wed) at 8:30am.

I'll keep giving her the critical care in small feedings.

I know they did a thorough oral exam, but this sounds exactly like what happened when one of my chins had a piece of hay embedded in his gum. After removal, he still had the retching motions for several days due to the gum injury anytime he would eat.

Update:

She continues to improve day to day. Wed morning she ate an entire serving (1/4 the daily dose recommended) but still had some minor swallowing issues. I took her to vet for the apt but there was a mix-up with the scheduling so they wanted me to come back at 8:30 PM, but would consider it a regular, not emergency visit. So, I took her back home and continued to feed her and every time she ate everything, but with the minor swallowing issues. I put in one of their shelves and a few more things and she was moving around and into everything like normal. So, I ended up canceling the visit since to do anything they would want to sedate her and the risk/return didn't seem worth it anymore.

Tonight she ate the entire portion without any swallowing issues. So, she continues to improve. I'm going to keep her on the critical care for a few more days and then try to give her a single pellet of their regular chinchilla food and see how she does with it.

At this point, I'm assuming that her swallowing issues were just a continued issue with her throat having been hurt during the choking issue Sunday.

The recovery process continues to progress, but slowly. As of today, her behavior is completely normal. She eats all of her critical care and more if I let her. I have begun giving her some pellets after her normal dose of critical care since she is still very hungry after finishing. She can eat 4-5 pellets without issue but eventually begins to do the swallowing motions again, although she recovers quickly. I am going to continue along this path until she can eat normally. At this point, it's been a solid week since she choked, so I am hopeful that she just needs more time and can resume eating normally soon.

If she is still hungry and looking for more, I would feed her as much as she is willing to take. I agree with Dawn and Tunes. I think you should have her teeth checked. It seems like she has issues if she needs to chew her food, but not if she does not need to. If it is her teeth, it will only get worse over time so the sooner you get her checked, the better.

At this point she is back to normal. It was just a long process but she is fine now. I went from critical care with a few hand fed pellets to slowly substituting more pellets and less critical care. I eventually weened her back onto pellets. My best guess is that she really hurt her throat when she choked and it took a while before she could get back to normal.