Archive for the ‘Hamster health’ Category

War Against the Bloodsuckers

January 9th, 2010

Has been won by the hamsters!

Last month, just as the robo girlies were finishing up on their mites medications, I noticed that Daddy Hamster’s skin was a little dry & flaky. He is all good now, but poor DH has also been attacked by the mites since the robo girlies’ cages are below DH’s cage. When I brought DH to the clinic, vet said that the mites on DH were still at the early stages, which was good. As for DH’s Ivermectin routine, his doses weren’t as far apart as the robos’ (the robos had to take their mites medications 2 weeks apart), DH’s medications were 8 days apart because he is a larger hamster.

The new year has started on a healthy note!

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Evil Weevil

December 19th, 2009

Found in Daddy Hamster’s cage:

DH weevil

I had just cleaned his cage a couple of days ago, so I suspected that the weevil came from the food! I hope that I don’t have to discard the newly opened bag of food :-(

Vet said that these weevils are harmless. Nevertheless, since then, I have cleaned DH’s cage with bleach & threw away his cardboard hideouts.

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Bloodsuckers

December 14th, 2009

Are invading the hamsters!!

At first, it was Almond the roborovski; there was some fur loss around her cheeks & her back, some scabbing on her back, & some flaking on her bare skin. Initially I thought it was because Kat & Joy had overgroomed her or they had been fighting. When I removed Almond to be in a cage by herself, even though the original scabs, there were more scabbing not long after. At that point, I suspected that she was scratching herself so bad to the point that she scabbed herself.

Last month, vet scraped some of Almond’s skins & placed them on a slide .. sure enough the vet saw lots of mites & mite eggs breeding on Almond. Euw!  She’s now on Ivermectin (medication for mites), 3 doses of 0.01 ml given 2 weeks apart. Ivermectin is a very strong medication & it had to be diluted for Almond’s dosage due to her small size. Besides, 1 dose is not enough to kill all the mites as mites have successive breeding stages, that’s why they are given 2 weeks apart.

I thought it was strange that only Almond was infested with mites since she had shared a cage with Joy & Kat. Well, a couple of weeks after Almond was discovered with mites, I saw the same symptoms on Joy & Kat: excessive scratching to the point that they bruise themselves & flaking. Off to the vet they went on the 9th of November & now they’re also on 3 doses of Ivermectin.

The vet said that they could’ve gotten mites either from the bedding (I read that people bake their bedding to kill mites, but I don’t want to use the oven that I cook with in order to kill bugs) or from the petstore (it’s just that the robos have always been asymptomatic until now). I’ll just have to stick to the medications & hopefully by the end of the third dosage, all the mites will have been killed. Vet recommended that I clean the cages & the toys in 39 part water & 1 part bleach. Afterwards, air dry them as any remaining chlorine will evaporate.

Almond fur loss

Almond before the vet visit; fur loss around the cheek area; if you right click  & “View Image,” you can see flakes in her ear

Almond mites
Almond after the vet visit; vet had scraped off some of the mites from the skin; Almond’s skin is dry because it’s exposed to Aspen bedding & I’ve been applying olive oil on it once every 2 days

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Lumpy Lump Lump

November 22nd, 2009

Near Kat’s bum bum.

On the 28th of October, vet surgically removed it. At this point, the lump feels like tissue mass & still benign, but that doesn’t mean that it cannot develop to something more aggressive. On 9th of November when Kat was supposed to have her sutures removed, guess what? She played doctor & had already removed it herself! Felt like my trip to the Animal Clinic was pointless … what the hey, the Animal Clinic is like my new hangout place already (when I call, I don’t even need to tell the receptionist my name, & all the staffs already know me!).

All I can do now is keep a close eye on Kat & hope that the lump doesn’t grow again.

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Weekend Scare

November 10th, 2009

This past Friday as I was about to give Baby Hamster his steroid gel, I noticed that there’s blood coming out of his penis. I looked around his cage & also found a drop of blood in the bedding. Good thing the Animal Clinic was open on Saturdays for emergency. Vet said that it could either be urinary prostate infection or tract infection .. I hope it’s the latter. He’s on Baytril for 10 days.

I don’t know what is going on, but it seems like almost all my hamsters are coming down with something …. *sigh* & I don’t like writing about sick hamsters either.

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No More Lumps!

November 5th, 2009

This past Monday, Baby Hamster went for a second vet visit to have his sutures taken out (from the removal of the ‘mobile’ cysts found under his neck) & to have another surgery (the removal of his skin below his left ear that houses the smaller cysts).

BH sutures

The sutures & where the large cyst was (under BH’s neck)

As the vet was examining the smaller cysts he was about to operate on, they have actually subsided to the point that the vet decided surgery was no longer needed :-D I think it must have been the 7-day dosage of Baytril that really helped the smaller cysts to go down. Now he’s been given some kind of steroid gel to be applied on twice a day, for a week.

Yay for a successful recovery!

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Good Night Brain

October 25th, 2009

Brain was euthanized on 20th of October.

The decision wasn’t easy for me to make; I had sometime to think about it & I hope that it’s the best decision for her.

This past Friday night, I discovered that some of the bedding in Brain’s cage was red. She was bleeding again. This time, it was worse because part of her intestine was sticking out, too. This happened during the weekend when the vet clinic was closed & all I could do was syringe feed her & hope that she would last until Monday to see the vet. She stopped bleeding after a night, but she still wasn’t herself — she was very lethargic & stayed in her house throughout the weekend, which wasn’t normal at all.

I finally got an appointment with the senior vet, not the vet who diagnosed Brain last time. The senior vet agrees with the previous diagnosis that the lump is cancer. The reason why the intestine prolapsed is because Brain’s reproductive system has been strained. Even if the intestine was put back in, that’s not the underlying problem. In the classes that he teaches, the vet uses hamsters of all stages of life to study cancer & he explains that the chance of Brain’s cancer to come back is high even after it’s been removed. Not being able to see her anatomy, he suspected that the cancer was either in the urinary tract or in the reproductive system, since both empty out through the urethra where the blood was coming out from. I didn’t want to surgery performed on Brain to remove the cancer if the cancer was going to come back, unnecessarily forcing Brain to undergo repeated procedures. The vet mentioned that Brain’s hunchback meant that she was in pain. After hearing all the options, I didn’t immediately decide for euthanasia. The more I weighed the options, the more conflicted I became, especially not knowing how Brain truly felt.

She will be cremated and her ashes will be spread onto a local pet cemetery ground. I think I will visit it next week.

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More Lumps!

October 22nd, 2009

In my place, it seems like there hasn’t been an isolated incident of hamster illness, i.e. there seem to be at least 2 hamsters who fall sick at the same time. This past weekend was Brain & Baby Hamster.

I discovered a lump behind BH’s left ear a couple of months ago, which the vet took care easily. However, smaller several cysts came back in the same area! I don’t have the stomach to squeeze out the puss ..

On Monday, the vet suggested that BH undergoes a surgery that removes the skin which houses the cysts, because squeezing the cysts is only a temporary solution & it’s a recurring problem. So, surgery was scheduled for the next morning.

Tuesday afternoon when I picked up BH from the animal clinic, the vet explained that as he put BH under anesthesia, he found a larger lump under BH’s neck that he didn’t notice the day before. The lump apparently could move around from side to side! Instead of removing the smaller cysts behind the left ear as planned, the vet removed the lump underneath the neck & decided to only squeeze out the smaller cysts as simultaneously performing 2 surgeries on BH would put too much strain on the little guy. The vet isn’t sure what the lump under the neck is, but he did mention the word “tumor” o_0

BH is now on Baytril for 7 days. I have him scheduled for a second vet appointment 2 weeks from now to remove the sutures on the neck & for the vet to finally get rid of the smaller cysts by removing the skin.

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Smaller Lump

August 15th, 2009

I took Baby Hamster in the morning to see the vet who managed to squeeze out the abscess with no effort! I told him how I tried doing that, but nothing came out. The vet said that the abscess probably wasn’t ‘ripe’ enough to come out. The abscess was light green & sticky, yum. The vet shaved off the area around the lump & squeezed out as much abscess as he could. Now BH is on antibiotic for a week.

BH abscess going down

When we arrived home, his abscess was still bleeding, so I compressed the area with thyme tea; by nighttime, it was already scabbing. The lump has gone down significantly, but the vet said how the cyst will always be there. As whether the abscess will come back or not, only time can tell. The vet also complimented on how BH was the best hamster he has ever handled; he didn’t bite or nip him at all :-)

Since BH has been on the antibiotic, he’s been sleeping a lot more. Not only that, I noticed that the fur on his back isn’t as thick as Daddy Hamster’s. Maybe BH is the daddy, and BH is older than I thought he is (I estimate his age to be about 1 1/2 years old)? Well, I hope that he’ll stay with my for a little while longer. So I hope that the sleeping is the side effect of the antibiotic & not of his age.

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Vets are gone!

August 10th, 2009

I go to this particular animal clinic, which is the official clinic for the local zoo. The clinic has 3 vets, but the one I always always see for rodent problems (chins & hamsters) has relocated out of state and my alternative (who treated Dee Dee & Winnie) is on vacation. The third vet has been under the guidance of those 2, but he’s only worked at this clinic for a couple of years and not as experienced with rodents. There’s a new replacement vet, but the staff I talked to doesn’t know if she’s experienced with rodents.

The problem is, I found a lump near Baby Hamster’s left cheek.

BH sick

I tried putting hot compress on him to release the abscess (I think it’s an abscess), but I wasn’t successful. I was afraid, most of the time, of hurting him. Plus, he wouldn’t stop moving. He was very patient with me though; at one point when he’s had enough, he gave me a friendly nip (not the painful ones Syrians can give, so I wasn’t punctured). Afterwards, he was still as tame as ever. I’ve read somewhere that Syrians, once they’ve been tamed, they will always stay tame. As for other hamsters, if you don’t handle them regularly, they will forget what it’s like to be handled & will bite again.

Since I’m reluctant to go to another clinic, I’ll give this vet a try.

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