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How Often Do Your Guinea Pigs Scratch Themselves?

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MomoMura

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Mines seem to scratch themselves at -least- once or twice every five to ten minutes. Sometimes even more. Is this normal?

I have taken them to the vet and he even checked them for parasites and couldn't find anything.

I've been waiting for other symptoms such as loss of appetite, not exercising, weight loss, etc but all seems to be ok. Just the scratching. And there aren't any bald patches on their coat or sores on their skin. My short haired at the moment has a bit of a rough coat my guess due to the scratching and I haven't brushed him in quite a while.

Any advice is greatly appreciated
 
Hmmmm, hard to say. Well done on getting a check up. If it has been going on a while you would have saw evidence of skin issues now... flaking, cuts etc....

Keep a close eye on them still.

What are they bedded on?
 
What are they bedded on?

It's been a month so far since we've last seen the vet

As for bedding, I use pine shavings. At the moment they have puppy pads on top of the wood shavings
 
Has your vet checked for fungal too? That does seem excessive scratching to me. How did they check for parasites? mange mites are invisible to the naked eye. Do they have any bald patches? thinning hair? or hair that looks as if it is broken half way down the hair shaft? Anything that looks like dandruff or black specks? Does the hair seem greasy at all? is the skin bright red?
 
Has your vet checked for fungal too? That does seem excessive scratching to me. How did they check for parasites? mange mites are invisible to the naked eye. Do they have any bald patches? thinning hair? or hair that looks as if it is broken half way down the hair shaft? Anything that looks like dandruff or black specks? Does the hair seem greasy at all? is the skin bright red?

I don't think he checked for fungal. For the parasites he inspected their skin closely, and he also taped several areas and then looked at it under a microscope. He concluded that nothing was wrong, but if they kept scratching to come back. I just don't want to take the hour long trip there and another hour back on public transit for nothing. Last time it was so stressful for them.

I haven't noticed any of those symptoms except maybe the broken hair half way down? Where Mura scratches a lot the hair kinda splits into two directions. I'll try to take pictures later.
 
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