Hazel's medical thread

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Zaphy

Post   » Tue Oct 06, 2015 1:08 am


Whatever it was seems to have passed. I've been slowly increasing her fresh veggie intake and her poops have been staying firm, so hooray! I switched to romaine lettuce this time around at the store and fed her little bits of that, and am curious to try green leaf again to see if it's just a sensitivity to green leaf lettuce specifically or if it was just that I didn't ease her into it slowly enough last time. I'm guessing it's the latter, but now I know that she's cool with bell pepper, romaine lettuce, and apple!

I also reintroduced her to my other two pigs and it went okay, though she's had some hair pulled here and there. According to the guide posted in Violet's thread that's normal but I did want to ask if hair pulling will also damage the skin. She's developed a few scratches/scabs on her rump where the hair's been pulled and they don't look like deliberate bites, comparing them to Violet's bite wound and the few bites that I've gotten here and there from the piggies over the months. They look more like either some skin got pulled with the hair chunk or the teeth dragged on the skin on the way to grab some hair, resulting in a shallow single cut in places. But still, there are several little scabs so I'm questioning if they're not deliberate at this point.

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Tue Oct 06, 2015 9:06 am


Thanks for the update. Hope all goes well from here out! Not rereading, but have you treated for mites?

Talishan
You can quote me

Post   » Tue Oct 06, 2015 7:08 pm


Their hair actually pulls out relatively easily. If I had to guess those are tooth scrapes.

Watch for any developing infection. A shallow scrape should heal okay, though. Anything deeper, more like puncture, though, could abscess very easily.

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Zaphy

Post   » Wed Oct 07, 2015 3:32 pm


Definitely will keep an eye on them. One of the bigger scrapes looks a little inflamed, so I'm watching it like a hawk. It still looks like it could heal, but we'll see. She's also lost some weight again, I'm guessing she's getting bullied away from the food, or possibly just is too afraid to venture out of her hidey hole often enough. I've been experimenting with different configurations of the multiple food locations, hopefully I'll figure one out that works best for all my piggies. She seems quite underweight compared to my other two girls.

bpatters
And got the T-shirt

Post   » Wed Oct 07, 2015 3:38 pm


If you're worried about her getting enough to eat, start weighing her daily (same time of day, preferably before breakfast). At feeding time, take her out of the cage and put her in a laundry basket and let her eat all she wants in peace. If she starts to gain, then she likely is getting bullied away from the food.

When she's a decent weight, you can start feeding her in the cage again. The multiple locations likely will work unless your others are so greedy that they scarf it all up before she gets a chance to finish.

Talishan
You can quote me

Post   » Thu Oct 08, 2015 9:43 pm


Ditto bpatters.

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Zaphy

Post   » Sun Oct 11, 2015 8:43 pm


Yeah that was a good idea, looks like she's back up to her weight when I first reintroduced her to the cage already! She's still getting hair pulled and shallow bites here and there, so her rump is looking a little worse for wear but as far as I can tell nothing is infected. Will continue feeding her out of cage for a while too, she's still pretty thin for her length I think. Thank you all for the suggestions!

Talishan
You can quote me

Post   » Mon Oct 12, 2015 3:58 am


Keep us posted. Good luck!

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Zaphy

Post   » Wed Oct 14, 2015 2:28 pm


Ahhhhh this morning she had what I'm guessing is a scab on her eyelid :( Her actual eyeball looks undamaged as far as I can tell, but I'm guessing that this is something that could be easily infected? Is this something that I should wait and see how she does with, or is it something to make a vet appointment about immediately? Sorry for the blurry photo, this is the best I could get. Looks like she got in a number of scuffles with the other pigs last night, a few of the larger scabs on her rump got pulled off and were bleeding a bit more freshly this morning in addition to this.

Image

The color seems really weird to me, is it normal for scabs to be this bright red color? At first when I saw it I thought it was some fuzz so I tried to brush it out of her eye, so I know it's fairly solid right now and not bleeding any more as far as I can tell.

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Wed Oct 14, 2015 2:35 pm


How does the eye look? A bright [spelling correction] red scab might be something else or it scabbed over and she took off the top part (leaving a sealed but red lower part). If you want to be sure, you'd have the vet check that the eye under the lid is uninjured. If the eye looks good and you have some protective eye drops/cream of some sort, that might help too.

www.guinealynx.info/.html
Last edited by Lynx on Wed Oct 14, 2015 9:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Zaphy

Post   » Wed Oct 14, 2015 2:51 pm


The eyeball itself that's showing seems okay- it's difficult to tell since she's got dark eyes. I wasn't able to easily get a look under the eyelid because of the squirming and biting, and didn't want to keep trying in case I irritated it.

Would sterile saline solution for contacts be okay to use on a guinea pig? I was thinking I could try to flush the eye a little in case something's stuck in it. I don't have any eye products for guinea pigs specifically.

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Zaphy

Post   » Wed Oct 14, 2015 6:49 pm


Okay, so the scab has darkened now to a normal scab color, I guess it was just fresh when I found her this morning. Part of the scab seems to be resting actually on her eye... should I be concerned about it scratching the eye?

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