You may have noticed that I haven't been on the forum for several days last week. During that time we have replaced the grotty old carpet in the guinea pig room (the largest room in house, by the way) with vinyl, so I can much more easily clean and disinfect the floor.
It was a job we had planned for next spring once it is warmer again, but after Barri's ringworm has made an unwelcome return (wrongly applied home treatment and a resulting serious case of ringworm was the reason why he was surrendered to rescue earlier this year), we decided on short notice to bring the floor replacement forward.
Since I have nearly 30 piggies as well as my office in the room, this has involved some major logistics as everything and everypig has had to come out for a couple of days to allow for plywood boarding (courtesy of hub) and the vinyl (professional) to be laid. The whole room then had to be deep cleaned and disinfected from top to bottom, including around 70 C&C grids and over 120 connectors, plus all bedding still has to be washed at high temperatures (my job).
In the middle of it all, old lady Hafren has developed total loss of appetite because of an adverse reaction to her antibiotic, which has meant that I have had to syringe feed and water her every 2 hours throughout the day and get up once or twice every night since then to get on top of a persistent eye infection. If I am not around as much, you'll know why... Totally knackered just about scratches the surface!
The good news is that so far my measures have worked and that Barri has remained the only affected piggy in the 3 weeks since the outbreak. His post-ringworm observation quarantine is ending in a few days, so is going to safe again to bring him and his wife Briallen back into the piggy room then.
Without the impossible to fully disinfect carpet which he'd been all over during cage clean just before I noticed the ringworm patch, it is much less likely for any other piggies to accidentally pick up a spore in the next 18 months - that is how long ringworm spores can stay viable.
Here are some pictures:
Piggies in the living room, in the kitchen, in the hall and in hub's office... basically everywhere!
Doing up the floor with new boards underneath and the vinyl on top:
And finally, the newly re-installed piggy room!
(PS: The empty pen in the middle is Barri and Briallen's)
It was a job we had planned for next spring once it is warmer again, but after Barri's ringworm has made an unwelcome return (wrongly applied home treatment and a resulting serious case of ringworm was the reason why he was surrendered to rescue earlier this year), we decided on short notice to bring the floor replacement forward.
Since I have nearly 30 piggies as well as my office in the room, this has involved some major logistics as everything and everypig has had to come out for a couple of days to allow for plywood boarding (courtesy of hub) and the vinyl (professional) to be laid. The whole room then had to be deep cleaned and disinfected from top to bottom, including around 70 C&C grids and over 120 connectors, plus all bedding still has to be washed at high temperatures (my job).
In the middle of it all, old lady Hafren has developed total loss of appetite because of an adverse reaction to her antibiotic, which has meant that I have had to syringe feed and water her every 2 hours throughout the day and get up once or twice every night since then to get on top of a persistent eye infection. If I am not around as much, you'll know why... Totally knackered just about scratches the surface!
The good news is that so far my measures have worked and that Barri has remained the only affected piggy in the 3 weeks since the outbreak. His post-ringworm observation quarantine is ending in a few days, so is going to safe again to bring him and his wife Briallen back into the piggy room then.
Without the impossible to fully disinfect carpet which he'd been all over during cage clean just before I noticed the ringworm patch, it is much less likely for any other piggies to accidentally pick up a spore in the next 18 months - that is how long ringworm spores can stay viable.
Here are some pictures:
Piggies in the living room, in the kitchen, in the hall and in hub's office... basically everywhere!
Doing up the floor with new boards underneath and the vinyl on top:
And finally, the newly re-installed piggy room!
(PS: The empty pen in the middle is Barri and Briallen's)
