[Stones] stones -how to prevent...

[S Mogensen]

Hi all
I am Danish, so in advance please forgive my English
long:
I have been investigating how to prevent stones in the urine for a long time 
now
 Since my favourite gp Turbo had a blatter infection for the first time, 
back in 2003 actually
 but I am still not near the end and a solution I 
fear
 Turbo is dead now, died in beginning of 2005 (5½ years old) but I want 
to prevent this problem with my other pigs so I keep on gathering info

I hope therefore some of you have done the same and we might be able to 
learn something from each other
 This is what I have found out so far:

The calsium/phosphate relationship in the food is important, it has to be 
3:2. Not that it has to be 3:2 in every single food item the pig gets, but 
the daily food consumption has to end up in 3:2
 I hope you understand.
Next there is the problem with the alkali urine
 gp´s as most vegetarians 
have alkali urine, this is caused by the large intake of vegetables. Food 
items that could make the urine more acidic is e.g. different types of grain 
(oat, wheat
), nuts (and meat, but this is of course not relevant with 
gp´s).
So far so good: all I have to do is:

1. make sure the dry food is correct calcium/phosphor ratio, plus a little 
overweight on the calcium, because the most vegetables are overweight on 
phosphorus.

2. Try to hold the urine on the acidic side by giving e.g. oatmeal, nuts and 
so on in their dry mix
to prevent stones from forming.

3. Make sure that 1 or 2 do not collide
 e.g. will dandelion give very 
alkali urine plus a LOT of calcium in it too
 dandelion are not good I large 
amounts for stone pigs


But it would be nice to be able to calculate which food item are better than 
others
 I have been reading about a certain “"Dr. Ragnar Berg” (from German) 
who should have explained about a way to calculate this, but can not find 
any literature on it

I have seen a table he has made that shows that cabbage (in general) are a 
lot better food item than e.g. cucumber, because the cucumber makes the 
urine much more alkali than the cabbage does
 but how much better is what I 
would like to know
I love to be able to calculate my way out of problems*S*.
I hope some of you can add to my knowledge (and correct if there is 
something I have misunderstand so far
).
Regards Susan
-by the way: can anyone tell me more about shillington? It is impossible to 
find it in DK...