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Oh dear the hamster may have ringworm :(

PigglePuggle

PigglePuggle

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Well as if we didnt have enough going on with my Mum in hospital, I noticed her hamster Mr Alice has 2 suspicious looking round bald patches on his side :(
Immediate deployment of strict ringworm hygiene and a vet trip for Mr Alice this afternoon!
Bloody Mum and bloody hamster, I do not need a fungus carrying hammy refugee in my life right now, I have too many healthy guinea pigs to be doing with that sort of thing!
Luckily Mr Alice has been staying in the spare bedroom well away from the piggies and I've been feeding him last as I dont think the piggies like his unfixed boy smell, and I already did a full cage clean and F10 blitzed all his stuff on arrival because it was stinky...
 
Really hope it isnt ringworm but... it looks like ringworm, only noticed last night because Mr Alice is not a friendly creature and bites and shrieks and writhes around if we try pick him up and usually he's under a pile of bedding and only comes out after dark... he is going to attack the vet and try jump off the examination table for sure, and applying any skin treatment is going to be very tricky :(
 
We had Hamsters over 30 years ago when the children were little and remember how hard they were to handle then. Fingers crossed it not ringworm, please let us know how you get on at the vets.
 
Hope the vets goes well with Mr Alice x
The dwarf hammie I rehomed years ago, Hamm, sounds very much the same with handling as Mr Alice! The noises that came from such a tiny beast! :yikes:
 
Not ringworm!
Lol silly me I made a classic hammy novice mistake... SCENT GLANDS!
I guess thats like a piggy novice encountering nipples and a grease gland for the first time, apparently male hammy's have 3 round bald patches, 2 on the back/sides, one on the tummy, that make stinky boy smells :)
Mr Alice has slightly asymmetric and "very well developed" scent glands and "he's certainly making the most of them" according to the vet. And the nibbling them a lot is to spread his stinky boy smell all over himself. The vet checked his fur with a UV light and there's no sign of anything fungal.
He's a good size and heft and is "a very well developed territorial male with some anger issues". The vet said he never met such an angry hamster but he seemed to know hamsters, and is sure the shrieking is not pain or even fear, its a very territorial male warning sound, "get your hand out of my bloody cage!"
So Mr Alice is just a very boss alpha male hammy :)
Scent glands! I learned something new today! I think that deserves a carrot slice and a cashew nut Mr Alice!
 
VickiA said:
A stinky feisty Mr Angry Mr Alice...
Click to expand...
Yes apparently I have been interpreting his behaviour all wrong, I thought the frantic nibbling of his bald patches that comes straight after the shrieking was maybe a stress-barbering thing... not at all, he's doing it to deliberately spread his stinky boy smell around so we realise he's a boss man and stop trying to invade his territory!
On the whole I think I prefer piggies but its good to know he's healthy and happy :)
 
Here's a couple of not very good pics of what I thought looked like ringworm but is a healthy hammy scent gland:
20200216_141127.webp
20200216_140824.webp
Here's a better pic of Mr Alice with a clean bill of health eating a cashew nut!
20200216_141032.webp
So funny now but it wasnt at the time...!
 
I'm happy we saw the vet though, definitely worth the £23 consultation fee to find out what's normal for an extended family pet that I didnt know much about that I've always worried might be stressed or unhealthy- well worth the money for a reassuring clean bill of hammy health and some fascinating new info about male hamster anatomy and behaviours! :)
 
PigglePuggle said:
I'm happy we saw the vet though, definitely worth the £23 consultation fee to find out what's normal for an extended family pet that I didnt know much about that I've always worried might be stressed or unhealthy- well worth the money for a reassuring clean bill of hammy health and some fascinating new info about male hamster anatomy and behaviours! :)
Click to expand...
Wow that's a cheap consult too! Ours are £31ish I think 😱
 
And we all think piggie behaviour is complex! :blink: Glad Mr Bolshy Alice has been given a clean bill of health 😆
 
Wow, happy to hear the good news!
I have an adopted hamster myself and I did not know this... you learn something new every day! 😅
 
LOL! Glad Mr. Alice is okay. The hammies we have now are quite friendly, but one of our last hamsters, Eevee, would take your hand off... she was an itty bitty dwarf and looked so innocent too, but she was a tiny dwarf hamster with the soul of an angry wolverine!
 
PigglePuggle said:
Not ringworm!
Lol silly me I made a classic hammy novice mistake... SCENT GLANDS!
I guess thats like a piggy novice encountering nipples and a grease gland for the first time, apparently male hammy's have 3 round bald patches, 2 on the back/sides, one on the tummy, that make stinky boy smells :)
Mr Alice has slightly asymmetric and "very well developed" scent glands and "he's certainly making the most of them" according to the vet. And the nibbling them a lot is to spread his stinky boy smell all over himself. The vet checked his fur with a UV light and there's no sign of anything fungal.
He's a good size and heft and is "a very well developed territorial male with some anger issues". The vet said he never met such an angry hamster but he seemed to know hamsters, and is sure the shrieking is not pain or even fear, its a very territorial male warning sound, "get your hand out of my bloody cage!"
So Mr Alice is just a very boss alpha male hammy :)
Scent glands! I learned something new today! I think that deserves a carrot slice and a cashew nut Mr Alice!
Click to expand...
Oh dear I totally missed this thread. I would have said its his scent glands. A lot of people think it's a skin problem or even tumors. My old syrian Cody's were brown and he was a cream hamster. Syrians have them in their hip areas and dwarfs on their tummy where a belly button would be.
 
So glad to hear the wee fella is OK though. My Cody used to squeak at me if I was in the room and he got up and either wanted attention or his dinner was late. Lol 😂 they're such characters.
 
Julie M said:
Oh dear I totally missed this thread. I would have said its his scent glands. A lot of people think it's a skin problem or even tumors. My old syrian Cody's were brown and he was a cream hamster. Syrians have them in their hip areas and dwarfs on their tummy where a belly button would be.
Click to expand...
It seems like you can see it more on the light-colored hamsters. We had a slate hamster and you couldn't see them, but can see them on the two we have now (one orange/cream, one white/light grey.)
 
Freela said:
It seems like you can see it more on the light-colored hamsters. We had a slate hamster and you couldn't see them, but can see them on the two we have now (one orange/cream, one white/light grey.)
Click to expand...
Yes Mr Alice is cream and white and they do look like big red round ringworm lesions! But they aren't so I am very happy and I think Mr Alice has realised I am the source of food, he'd been hiding from me since we brought him here from Mum's last Wednesday but tonight he was sitting waiting for me with his little paws on the edge of his food dish and didnt shriek or run away at all :)
I've ordered him some very expensive natural food mix with meal worms and dried grapes and sunflower seeds in rather than the awful bright food colouring chunks of whatever cereal blend is in his current cheapo P@H muesli mix!
 
SkyPipDotBernie said:
Alot of people think gerbils are sick when they see their scent gland. It's on the tummy in the centre, if you ever have gerbils you know now
Click to expand...
Thanks! Mr Alice is a bit of a learning curve as he really isnt a guinea pig but hopefully I am getting the hang of this... am I right in thinking they need a lot more protein than piggies and some meaty things? Most of my household is vegan but the tarantula isnt and I assume Mr Alice also needs a bit more of that "caveman diet" thing with meaty mealworms and less carbs and stuff while me and the piggies are getting fat eating vegetables...!
 
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