A guinea pig male that has developed this problem usually need to be checked and cleaned regularly for the rest of his life. Because of the smell you might want to use gloves while cleaning out. Gently roll the sac inside out and remove the fecal matter. You might want to poor a few drops of some mineral oil into the sac to loosen the ball. The more often you do this the less smelly it will be.
Sometimes there is no ball, just normal feces collocted in the sac. This is cleaned out the same, and is often a lot easier and less smelly to do. Old males are prone to this.
If there are no or very few normal feces the guinea pig will not be able to re-ingest the vitamin B droppings, and you will have to add vitamin B to this guinea pig's diet. Among the normal feces there are special softer feces with a lot of vitamin B in them, that a normal guinea pig ingest. So guinea pigs are coprophagic. But if the normal feces all got stuck into the fecal ball so would also the vitamin B feces, and the guinea pig may get sick if you do not give extra vitamin B to such a guinea pig.
There seem to be a strong connection between low fiber contents in the diet and impaction. Pellets contain way too little fiber of the right length. The only way to help from develop this problem is to feed large amounts of high quality timothy hay. (Not alfalfa hay.)
My advice is: Never feed pellets or alfalfa hay. Feed lots of timothy, grass or meadow hay plus lots of fresh vegetables instead. If you like pellets, try the timothy pellets from Oxbow. Only give small amounts of pellets! Cavies are not born to eat pellets.
Copyright Eva Johansson.
Last update: 2nd of December 2005.