Archive for the ‘Chinchilla health’ Category

Day Hospitalization

September 12th, 2008

Another appointment with the vet this morning, because I noticed that Winnie’s droppings are even smaller & less. His stomach feels real tight & bloated, vet said it’s most likely because the food he took in yesterday (from me force-feeding me) isn’t moving & pooped out properly.


At the animal clinic

X-ray with Iodine shows no irregular gas pattern or anything solid in his digestive tract. However, soft things like fur won’t show up on the x-ray. So, there could be a possibility that there are soft things stuck in his digestive tract. If there was something stuck in his digestive system, gas would build up in a certain area, causing him to bloat. Vet recommended that I hospitalize him for the day, so the vet could gas him & take his blood, give him some fluids, and gut motility medicine to stimulate the body to excrete on its own. I decided to go ahead with some blood works, because the weekend is coming & I want to be able to pinpoint his illness as soon as possible for my own peace of mind. The blood test will show any abnormal count of white blood cell (hints of parasitic or viral infection). Worse comes to worse, it’s some of kind of internal organ failure, like the kidney. The vet is very apprehensive about surgically figuring out what’s wrong with him. So, at this point she’s trying the best she can to use non-invasive methods.

I continually called the vet to check up on him. Even with the help of medication, Winnie still isn’t pooping normally. The vet doesn’t want Winnie to go into shock because of gut stasis.

Let’s hope for the best.

**UPDATE**


In the car, Winnie rides shotgun

Winnie came back home with more medications: pain medication (to ease pain from any gut stasis) & gut motility medicine (to get his digestive system moving again). Vet wasn’t able to extract any blood out of him. She tried the ear & the leg, & decided that’s enough poking around. Besides, it’s dangerous to put a chinchilla under sedation for too long. Everyone at the animal clinic seemed to be getting attached to Winnie (after only a day of hospitalization). What can I say? He is a cutie & I’m a proud owner :-D

I wasn’t able to buy the Alfalfa King brand of timothy hay (what I normally buy for the chinnies) & had to settle with Kaytee. Good news is that Winnie is nibbling on some of the timothy hay :-)

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Force-Feeding

September 11th, 2008

I called the vet this morning, because I noticed that Winnie hasn’t been eating & his droppings are getting smaller. Vet told me to come in & pick up Oxbow Critical Care, because it’s important that Winnie eats something. Oxbow Critical Care is basically the powder form of hay & pellets mix, normally given to baby & sick animals. I had to mix it with water & feed to Winnie using a syringe.

It’s real messy force-feeding Winnie with that stuff; it gets everywhere around his mouth & he just looks like a dirty chinchilla who has been eating mud.

I do hope he’ll get better soon. Another trip to the vet tomorrow.

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Trip to the Vet

September 9th, 2008

Last Friday, I let Winnie out for about 30 minutes, then I put him back into his cage. Half an hour later, he started barking non-stop. I got worried & picked him up to see if he happened to be injured from his time outside of the cage. I didn’t see anything wrong, so I put him back. I noticed that his white fur had shed a little on my black shirt. So I thought he was probably spooked by something.

When I put him back, he continued barking. He continued doing this throughout the night & I suspected something else was wrong.

I noticed from that day onwards that his poop has gotten smaller & harder. He’s been eating less & he’s more high strung than usual. I couldn’t see what’s wrong with him physically. Afraid that it might be something internal, I decided to take him to the vet.

This was my first time taking a chinnie to the vet. When vet examined Winnie physically & felt his colon, he said that it’s empty. A healthy chinchilla should have a colon full of poops (chinchillas poop non-stop hehe). On a good note, vet said that Winnie’s heart beats calm for a chinchilla :-D

The next thing the vet did was to take some stool samples to see whether there’s anything wrong with his digestive system. Result showed that there’s an abnormally high number of ‘bad’ bacteria (he explained to me in great details, but I sort of blanked out) found in his poop. Everything comes down to poop & now we know that Winnie’s problem isn’t from teeth deformity (which is very common in chinchillas). He said that the ‘bad’ bacteria has always been in his system, but was in small numbers & kept under control by healthy immune system. But for some reason, maybe due to stress (which can compromise the immune system) or just dirty food (we don’t know how pellets & timothy hay were processed etc), the ‘bad’ bacteria’s number multiplied.

Winnie’s been prescribed 2 oral medications: an antibiotic (to kill the ‘bad’ bacteria) for 1 week & some yellow gooey stuff (Bene-Bac Pet .. which is the ‘good’ bacteria to be added into his system) for 2 weeks. In the meantime, I have to keep an eye on him & make sure that he’s eating normally. If he doesn’t want to eat for the next 24-36 hours, vet said I might have to force-feed him. This was my first time taking a chin to the vet & I’m glad I got to see a vet who seems to know what he’s talking about.

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