Posts Tagged ‘hamster’

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.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Hamster care, Hamster health | Comments (6)

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!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Hamster care, Hamster health | Comments (3)

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.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Hamster care, Hamster health, Rainbow bridge | Comments (2)

Sharing

October 13th, 2009

Not!

Robos sharing1

Robos sharing2

Robos sharing3

Seems like there’s 1 girly who is always hogging the food bowl. I don’t want to get them a bigger food bowl because they’ll just end up pooping inside the food bowl 0_o

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Hamster adventure | Comments (2)

Summer Goodness – Broccoli

October 3rd, 2009

We all know how hamsters love broccoli. But what can beat eating freshly picked broccoli from your own garden?

BH broccoli flower

What Baby Hamster is eating is not the broccoli florets your normally find in the supermarket. Because it’s been quite warm lately, my broccoli plants have started going to seed. That’s why the broccoli that BH is eating looks slightly different. Had I cut the broccoli later, it would’ve flowered.

This was my last yield of broccoli :-( To see how the garden has progressed throughout the summer, see here.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Hamster adventure | Comments (1)

Still Too Small?

September 21st, 2009

The Robo girlies sure do loooovveee their wheel! This is them even with a larger wheel ..

robos wheel squeeze2

And I’m glad they can share without having to fight :-D

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Hamster adventure | Comments (2)

Too Small!

September 16th, 2009

This is what happens when you put a small wheel in the robos’ cage:

robos wheel squeeze1

“Heeeyy! You’re stepping on my face!”

Good thing it was only temporary :-)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Hamster adventure | Comments (2)

Gifts

September 8th, 2009

I was recently in the Tiny Island. During my stay, I did not dare to brave the crowds and the expensive taxi fares of going into downtown despite all the new shopping places. Because of that, I didn’t buy anything for myself, but I didn’t forget to bring back some gifts for the animals:

Gifts from SG

Since I’m stingy & I don’t want these foods to run out too fast, these foods will only be treats & not part of the animals’ daily diet.

I like Marukan :-)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Chinchilla products, Hamster products, Rants | Comments (3)

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.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Hamster care, Hamster health | Comments (1)

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.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Hamster care, Hamster health | Comments (0)

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »