Help needed for Uni

  • Thread starter Thread starter Becky
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
B

Becky

Hi,
I'm doing a Fdsc in Veterinary Nursing and pratice management at a university called Harper Adams and am going to tope up to full hons degree, (you may not no it, but it was voted top uni in land base course by the sunday times :) :) :)) my aim is to write papers on guinea pigs in veterinary medicine and get the whole profession to take them more seriously and get veterinary surgeon/nurses to understand their needs, as these are different to the common animals you see in practice cats and dogs etc.

Anyway i need to write an assignment on something of my own chose, now this should take me 2 years so its going to be pretty big. However, this assignment should only be simple nothing to complected, so i have decide to do it dental problems in guinea pigs. So i am going to look at if one breed is more pron to dental problems, what type of problems these maybe and how best to treat them. I no this isn't ground breaking research, but i do have a very big project plans for the next 3 years along as i do well in this one.

Now what i need is to no if anyone could help me out with this, in the next month or so i will have a sort of questionnaire written up and i need as much information as possible on guinea pigs with dental problems, different breed and what is being done to help them. So if anyone has a large number of guinea pigs or just one piggie with dental problems would they be willing to help me with my research and fill out a questionnaire and maybe keep me up to date with their problems?

I would be very grateful for any help. :smitten: :smitten: :smitten:
 
Becky, what a fantastic subject for a thesis! Guineas :smitten:

I lost me darling Dr Atkins 0:) because of malocclusion.

I would love to help in his memory. :)
 
Good for you to raise piggy awareness.



Sadly though I really can't help with anything dental wise :(
 
Hi, if its a breed/variety you would like to do a paper on then I would suggest Satins. Osteodystrophy causes lots of dental probs in Satins (though there are lines that don't suffer, not all mine have, thats why its interesting ::) )

Unfortunately some vets don't even know what a Satin guinea looks like which can be a problem. That said, not all dental probs in Satins are due to Osteodystrophy, they can get 'normal' ones too. I've had a few here with just run of the mill dental probs that were corrected and the pig lived on- its not black and white :)

I've seen more pet guineas with dental probs than purebreds though in rabbits I would suspect to see it the other way around.

While you're doing this it would be a good idea to introduce the benefits of dental work without aneasthetic and the needs of a pig with dental problems, once again these recommendations are made by the Cambridge Cavy Trust- could you join them?

It doesn't relate to breeds but I have some 3 Incisor piggies here too :)

Are you going for absolute purebreds (most of my Satins are but I have 4 pets/dollymixtures). All my other dental problem piggies have been pets, my p/breds have been fine :)
 
Thank you everyone for all the help. I've got a lot to be before i start doing my own research, but its good to no people are willing to help me. I will keep you up to date on what i am doing. :)
 
When I say pets I mean guinea pigs of unknown origin ::) crossbreeds etc. I had some very well bred Selfs that you might expect to have a problem with (and Am Cresteds, Shelties with 'rounder' heads) but they have all been fine. My friend who rescues rabbits sees far more dental probs and its in the buns with 'rounder' heads. My last two were 2 crossbred Silver Agouti coloured ones that were brothers. Both had terrible tooth and jaw problems (often its the jaw thats at fault- teeth can usually be righted :) ). It was obviously congenital and is one of my reasons for being so anti pet shop- they don't see the end result of the pig eg how they end up (there is no feedback on the health) so the same lines are bred from over and over again.

You can make this as complicated as you want I think ::)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top