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Urgent help!

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A cavy can do significant, and sometimes irreparable, damage to itself if left in this condition unsupervised, even for a small period of time.

If you have not got any paper bedding, a towel would be adequate.
 
Oh god, we put a sock on him and he went absolutely crazy, running around his cage until it came off and now he's so stressed

We're just going to wait until the morning.
 
I have had a pig with a really bad mite infestation who had also scratched himself raw with large open wounds. I covered his wounds & made matters worse, he scratched more & where the bandage had indented his hair he opened up wounds there too. He was in a pitiful state when i first got him & i did wonder if i might lose him (having never had a pig with mites so bad) & took him to the vet who advised against putting anything on his wounds (including cream) as this may encourage him to bite/lick them. He was put on metacam which did help & whilst he didn't stop scratching completely each time a new scab formed it was smaller than before but I didn't see a significant improvement until the 3rd dose of ivomec had been given.
 
Please do not put the vitamin drops in his water, this can change the taste of the water and can stop them from drinking it so they can become dehydrated, perhaps you could give him vegetables instead of vitamin c drops, this will still give him vitamin c :)
I can't offer much advice but good luck! :)
 
Skin wounds are notoriously difficult to treat. However, I, generally, believe you have Ted's best interest at heart, and will choose the most appropriate course of action.
 
You do need to get your piggie back to the vets urgently as it sounds like he has a bad case of mites which if not treated properly can lead to fitting.

http://www.guinealynx.info/mites.html


The vet should be treating the condition with ivermectin injections, one every 10-14 days.......three injections in all. If the vet has not given this treatment it needs to be started immediately. Can you confirm whether Ted has had any ivermectin injections at all?

Sometime in bad cases a steroid injection can be given to help relieve the itching/irritation....I suggest you also try and get the vet to give one in this case. However you said in an earlier post that you have been given a topical antibiotic/steroidal cream for the wounds by the vet - I suggest you try and put that on (tiny amounts spread very thinly) as it may help relieve the irritation over the weekend such that a steroid injection may not be necessary.

Metacam (oral) will help relieve the pain and inflammation.....you could try infant calpol up to 0.2ml twice daily (for an adult guinea pig) until you get to the vet on monday and get some metacam.


Rather than put vitamins in the water, get some Vit C tablets (without zinc and not slow release) and grind them up and either sprinkle on his food or dissolve in water and syringe feed him with a 1.0ml syringe.

It mght be worth looking at this post of Laura's which details a first aid kit to have on hand for the future:

I hope you cam persuade the vet to give the ivermectin injections for free..
and that Ted makes a full recovery which he should do providing he gets the ivermectin.

HTH
x
 
How is Ted this morning?

Ditto to Pebble's suggestion of pain relief, if you have infant Calpol or children's Nurofen there, this is the very least I would do - and the very first thing I would do, too.

Pebble, I said to the owner that I would personally not use the antibiotic/steroid cream, it contains Chloramphenicol, Excipinet, Prednisolone and Phenylmercuric nitrate. It sounds strong and not something I would personally put onto open wounds - partly because, as I said in a previous thread, I can't find a great deal of anything about the Excipinet and little about the Phenylmercuric nitrate, and I like to know what's being used.

Applying a body bandage has major pros and major cons, the main pro is that it will protect the skin from being scratched, but the main cons are that it will cause major discomfort to already painful nerve endings in the skin, and there's the risk the warmth will encourage the spread of any fungal conditions or the breeding of any bacteria in the wounds. If a body bandage is to be used, I would personally recommend it is applied by an expert hand to ensure it is done safely and correctly.
 
good morning everyone......Ted has had quite a good night actually :)

In the end we decided to put him back in his cage and not try any creams or gels or socks after he nearly scared us to death when we put that on him; He bit himself a couple of times and squealed but then he just stopped, calmed down and this morning he's scabbing up quite well.
Just to clarify the treatment he had/is having: he has been treated with something that killed the mites, he doesn't have them anymore, plus we have been given 2 more doses of stronghold to top him up with. He has a cortisone cream we have stopped giving him as Laura advised until his wounds were not longer open, he also has a tonic. We did try aloe gel but that itched him too so we are just going to leave them to heal naturally as Niki advised, but if he bites himself again we will try the infant pain relief we can get here.
Our vet is very knowledgeable about pigs and very kind, she has treated all our animals for years and never misdiagnosed or let us down :)
So for now, Ted's cage is pushed up next to Figgy and Serge's cage and they chat to each other and we give him lots of cuddles, fresh vitamin rich food and we will try the crushed vit C tablets as suggested by several posters.
Thanks everyone for being so helpful, things always seem much worse late on a saturday night rolleyes
 
awwwwwww well done Ted xx>>>xx>>>
Oh love i do hope they can find something else to relieve his pain poor little man :{
Good signs tho that he seems a little better this morning!
more healing wheeeeeeks of loves from the girls and me xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
 
Laura-CCC4 said:
Pebble, I said to the owner that I would personally not use the antibiotic/steroid cream, it contains Chloramphenicol, Excipinet, Prednisolone and Phenylmercuric nitrate. It sounds strong and not something I would personally put onto open wounds - partly because, as I said in a previous thread, I can't find a great deal of anything about the Excipinet and little about the Phenylmercuric nitrate, and I like to know what's being used.
Click to expand...
Hi Laura

I quite agree.... normally I too would be reticent about putting cream on open wounds. However this was a "tide me over emergency measure" til the folllowing week and pocoandfiggy had nothing to hand other than the cream ...which had steroids and could therefore provide some relief for Jack on a short term emergency basis. Putting a thin layer of the cream AROUND the open wound would be better than on top of it as the itching is on the boundaries

For info: Excipients is a collective term for all other chemicals added to a pharmaceutical preparation that aren;t the active ingredients. Phenylmercuric nitrate is a common preservative added in tiny amounts to many topical pharmaceuticals to prevent microbial spoilage once the bottle/tube is opened..e.g. It is a constitutent of Optrex Infective eye drops.

In high doses it is of course very toxic.and you would need to be careful about long term use leading to accumulation as it is a mercuric compound..but at the levels used in pharmaceutical preparations it should have no adverse effect on piggies.

Hope Jack is doing OKtonight
x
 
Glad Ted's feeling better and you've had some great advice here. Get well soon little one x
 
Thanks for all your kind concern everyone!
Just a quick Ted update:
We took him back to the vets today as he is still scratching and biting himself and very distressed. She checked that all the mites were dead (they were), she checked him for a fungal infection (no spores) and so is now thinking it is possibly an allergy. We are still giving him daily treatment and we have a mild anti-fungal/anti-infammatory cream to rub on him and she wants to see him again in a few days.
If it is an allergy, what would be the possible causes?
 
What bedding do you use?

I am personally exceptionally sceptical about the allergy theory...mites won't be eradicated with only one treatment, and fungal is still perfectly possible.

I am aware my opinions are probably making things trickier for you, as I understand that you must trust your vet, and it is harder for you in France.
 
thanks Laura, we are now fairly convinced it is fungal. The cream from the vet is called Panalog, we have to use it twice a day and it soothes him quite a bit.
Today our neem melt and aloe gel came from Gorgeous Guineas. We have used both on him, disinfected his cage, bowls etc and just put towels in the bottom of the cage. He is slowly improving overall, but still every now and then biting himself really hard till he bleeds and then shrieking from pain. rolleyes
 
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