Syringe feeding

[LillyChu]

Hello everyone!

Background > One of my chins has a tumor next to his lungs, which makes eating food very painful for him, after talking about it with my vet I asked her if I could give him a mix of Critical Care from Oxbow and Recovery from Science Selective, she said I could try. This was 1 month ago and my chin has been doing amazing, however he keeps flucuating between 516 gram and 500 gram.. His normal weight is about 670, so he is still very underweight, but some days it goes up and some days it goes back down and I have no clue what I can do to get him to a healthier weight and also be able to keep him there. Reason for not putting him down is that he has still so much life in him and seems to be enjoying it a lot aswell and has no issues with the feedings.

Question > Currently he is still underweight, even tho he gets 6 feedings of 10ml each, could I add something to the solution for him, so he won't lose weight every few days?

 

[tunes]

I am hand feeding a couple chins right now and they get 50 mL at one sitting. Sounds like you might need to up your daily feeding amount.

 

[Amethyst]

Depending on how much water you are adding you need to feed about 50-60 ml of syringe food per 500g of body weight per day just to maintain weight. For weight recovery you need about 100ml per 500g of body weight. So as mentioned I would try to get more food into him per feeding or try doing more feedings if possible.

Up to 20 grams is a normal weight fluctuation, their stomach, gut, and bladder can each hold around 10 grams so it can go up and down depending on if they peed, pooped, ate, or drank.

 

[LillyChu]

Alright, I'll add more feedings throughout the day then! Thank you both very much