What is this please?

[BewareOfTheCarpet]

Posting here for traffic. My Guinea pig seems really unwell. Don’t think he has eaten - certainly for a day at least. And I’ve just noticed this on his back end. ☹️

I will take him to the vet tomorrow but does anyone know what this is?

Thanks

I'm sorry for your loss. You did all you could by taking him to the emergency vet.

This isn't a dig at you, so please don't take it as such. I'm only saying this in case you have any more piggies. They eat almost constantly and the minute you notice they've gone off their food (even for an hour or so) it means there's something wrong and they need to go to a vet.

Sorry for your loss @BewareOfTheCarpet . Fly strike is awful .

He's got fly strike and it's a vet emergency. You need to get him to a vet ASAP, the maggots are eating his skin 😳

@DumpedByText if you had read all the OPs messages you would see that poor piggie died earlier .

So sorry. Glad you were able to give him cuddles.
If it's any comfort it's likely he had an illness (hence diarrhoea and off his food) and the fly strike was secondary to that. The flies are attracted to poorly animals with dirty bums. If you couldn't see actual maggots just eggs, and you washed them off, you probably caught that problem before they got him.

Thank you again to all. Really good of you to take the time to respond.

stayathomegardener

That's really sad. I'm sorry to hear about your ram.

Albgo Yes you are right and It's good advice. Ironically by trying to keep him cool I moved him to an out of the way spot where I wasn't passing him all of the time. So I didn't realise until it was too late.

Oh I'm sorry to hear that. It got one of my rabbits several years ago so you learn to be hyper vigilant. It gets them so quickly there's sometimes not much you can do.

Guinea pigs hide illness really well. They're pretty animals so showing illness would make them an easier target. It's very easy to miss illness until its too late. The flies would be attracted by diarrhoea. It sounds like it was the illness not the fly strike that caused his death, thank goodness.
I keep my piggies in the house - you get to know them really well & can notice changes more quickly.
They live best in pairs or groups - you might know that anyway, but just in case you decide to get some more. They're lovely little animals.

I meant PREY animals, not pretty animals although they're very pretty too 😁