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Posts Tagged ‘hamsters’

Possible Skin Tumor?

March 16th, 2010

Earlier this year, I noticed that Joy had something that looked like an abscess on her tummy. She had probably popped it herself & it was already scabbing up by the time I saw it. I cleaned the area, applied some aloe vera & thought nothing much of it.

Joy bleeding1

Just last week, I noticed that the abscess has returned & it’s bigger. I cleaned the area again, applied more aloe & waited for a couple of days to see if it would get better.

Joy bleeding2

Since it didn’t scab up, I took her to the vet today. Vet suspected that it’s skin tumor because he felt a lump. He wanted to be conservative, so he just prescribed Joy with some antibiotic cream. For a week, I’m supposed to clean the area twice a day with hydrogen peroxide & subsequently apply the antibiotic cream. If that doesn’t help, vet said that he could surgically remove the skin tumor & it won’t be a difficult procedure as the tumor is in the skin layer, no need to open her up.

So we’ll see how she’ll do with the antibiotic cream for a week.

Tags: abscess, antibiotic cream, hamster, hamsters, hydrogen peroxide, roborovski, roborovskis, skin cancer, skin tumor
Posted in Hamster care, Hamster health | Comments (3)

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.

Tags: hamster, hamsters, syrian, syrians, weevil
Posted in Hamster care, Hamster health | Comments (3)

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

Tags: fur loss, hamster, hamsters, ivermectin, mites, roborovski, roborovskis, robos, rodent, rodents, scab, scabbing, scabs
Posted in Hamster care, Hamster health | Comments (2)

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.

Tags: benign tumor, hamster, hamsters, robo hamster, roborovski, roborovskis, robos, surgery, suture, tissue mass, tumor
Posted in Hamster care, Hamster health | Comments (2)

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: blood, bloody genital, bloody penis, hamster, hamsters, syrian, syrian hamster, syrians, urinary tract infection, uti
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 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: abscess, animal, animals, hamster, hamsters, lump, mice, syrian, syrians, vet, veterinarian
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: died, euthanasia, euthanisation, euthanization, hamster, hamsters, pneumonia, put to sleep
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: animal, animals, hamster, hamster food, hamster foods, hamsters, robo, roborovski, roborovskis, robos, rodent, rodents
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: animal, animals, bolting, broccoli, garden, gardening, hamster, hamster food, hamster foods, hamsters, summer
Posted in Hamster adventure | Comments (1)