[Stones] Distilled water

[ABCS]

You are really not supposed to give piggies distilled water.  My vet is adamant about that.  

Instead, you can buy a premium bottled water like Penta, or check the mineral content of name-brand bottled water like Poland Spring on their website.  As long as you do not buy a "mineral water" it should be much lower than your hard tap water.  I have found it helpful to use bottled water for my stones pigs just to avoid the fluoride in our tap water, which remains even after filtering - there are studies that show fluoride can contribute to stone production.  I buy Penta water, which is expensive if you have a lot of pigs...


On Dec 31, 2009, at 3:50 PM, Ann Evans wrote:

> Dear GPDD Family,
> 
> Is it safe to feed cavies distilled water? I have a 5 year old female cavy that had a huge stone removed from her urethra 13 months ago. Ever since the surgery I have given her 50 mg of liquid vitamin C and 0.2 ml of hydrangea root tincture for urinary health every day. On Christmas Day she showed signs of pain when I picked her up. The slightest touch near her urethra caused her to week in pain. I did a urinalysis using a strip reagent and it was positive for blood. I had an xray done and it showed urinary uroliths in the urethra. The uroliths look like gravel. I know cavies have a high alkaline urinary pH that is around 8.5. Cavies excrete excess calcium and phosphorous into the urine. I live in Floria where we have high concentrations of both calcium and phosphorous in the water thus calcium carbonate and triple phosphate uroliths can easily form. Since we have hard water is it safe to give cavies only distilled water? Kinjaroo is scheduled to have surgery on Tuesday. She is currently on Rimadyl 10 mg twice a day and pediatric bactrim 0.5 ml twice a day along with the hydrangea root tincture. She is eating and drinking and acting totally normal except if any pressure is applied to her urethra. I am open to any suggestions. I put all my piggys on distilled water since Christmas Day.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Ann and the Rescued Piggys of Piggyville, Tampa Florida USA.
> 
> 
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