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[Jenova]

Hi, I'm posting this for a friend so I hope she doesn't mind.

She has an eight year old male, neutered, chinchilla who is really ill and so far the vets are stumped. He lives with his mate and daughter and last weekend got really puffy eyes. She took him to the vet and got antibiotic eye drops. He seemed to pick up over the next few days but then went downhill so she rushed him to an emergency vet. This vet thought it could be pneumonia but also though his chest was clear. He was given an antibiotic injection. The day after she took him back to her usual vet who thought it might be a dental problem. They were not able to get a good look at his teeth but gave him a painkiller. He was on antibiotics and being fed by syringe as he wasn't eating. They recommended a vet who specialised in chinchillas. She got an appointment with them and they said he had a large ulcer in his mouth and and eye infection, so confirmed the dental issues. He is being kept in over this weekend with his family so that they can build up his strength and then they are going to do a dental on Monday and x ray him. He is also having a culture test on the discharge from his eye.

So far do you think she is going the right way with the treatment? She is understandably very worried and it's the first time any of her chinchilla have been ill. She was also worried because she had been given some info in the past which meant that she had been giving her chinnies treats that some would consider unsuitable and got a lot of stick from this on another forum. She sometimes give them fresh fruit which is considered really bad in America but for some reason is done more often in England. They get lots and lots of good hay etc and the vets are aware of their diet but I think she's wondering if this could be an issue. I know this is a predominantly American forum so I would appreciate your opinions on this one.

Thanks.

[dianah]

i think the treatment is going the right way. they really do need the dental xray - there is a possibility that his dental roots have overgrown through the top arcades into his ocular spaces. this would not be good so fingers crossed it's something else. it could also be an infected root given he has a lesion they can see but again, upper jaw is not a good place to have that. the ulcer they can see could also be caused by a spike/spur on his teeth - this happens when the teeth are not ground down evenly and as it's sharp, it can cause injuries on the inside of the mouth. they would have seen these, depending on how good he is at letting people have a look in his mouth. these can be filed down and if his teeth are not misaligned, tooth friendly diet can help keep these down.

as for fresh fruit, i am not sure it's location dependent. i think there are plenty of people who don't know what healthy treats are (fruit sounds healthy!) and because there quite often is no immediate obvious problem, they think everything is fine. i've heard of people who gave their chins chocolate as a treat without any harm. all you can do is give them the information on what's healthy and what isn't, there's sadly not much more you can do and if people decide to feed their chinchillas nuts, fresh fruit or, in case of my rescue banana chips and no hay then there's a good chance they are making them sick.
if nothing else, eating high calorie foods like fruit mean they will eat less of the low calorie foods (hay) that they desperately need to keep their teeth down.

just to illustrate, mae, i rescued her last october and she had about a week left in her. she was so undernourished she could not even have a dental xray she desperately needed. the people who owned her before fed her banana chips and chinchilla mix. she had numerous spurs, a fragmented tooth, she has a chronic jaw bone infection which has caused the jaw bone to extend downwards (she has a tusk), she's been in gi stasis numerous times and she's frequently getting respiratory infections. ALL this could have been prevented if she was being fed the right diet. she's not suffering from dental problems anymore since her dental and i have her on a special dental diet (we have to be very careful what we give her because of the constant stasis danger). she's a happy and affectionate girl and thankfully i'm pretty good at recognising there's something wrong so we start treatment straight away - this usually means that she only feels rubbish for a day.

[Jenova]

Thank you.
She feels bad as she thought she was doing what was best. I'll pass the info on.

[dianah]

it's difficult because there's so much info out there, very often outright contradicting. on top of that - i keep banging on about this - there's no legislative requirement for the animal food/treats sold in the shops to be actually suitable and healthy for the animals they are being labelled for so there's plenty that really are not the right thing but how are you meant to know if it has a chinchilla on the packet?

when i got chinchi - he was my first chin, we lost him last year  - i was recommended by the vet to feed him a little bit of fresh spinach or kale and i did. never had any problems and fluffy and the babies had the spinach too. until i got mae who nearly died of stasis (not due to spinach, she didn't get any) and it scared me. so they don't get spinach anymore and they don't really care. but that just shows that opinions do vary even on professional level. although i would imagine the opinion on fresh fruit would be the same because of the high sugar content as well as the water content.

[Jenova]

I did all my research on here, but when I got Cheech the pet shop told me to feed her guinea pig food mixed in with the chinchilla food and to give her monkey nuts as a treat. So glad I found this place!! You'd think somewhere selling pets would know how to look after them, but luckily I learned that is nowhere near true before it was too late. I don't even trust most vets anymore. 

[dianah]

oh yea, absolutely. i've got a few books i got when i got chinchi and some info is appalling. at the same time, i think because they're rodents and other rodents are nowhere near as fussy and they have only recently been reintroduced into the wild so the nutrition and everything else was pretty much guesswork based on other species. now at least we know what they eat in their natural habitat and there's more research as well.

i'm pretty lucky with the vets. i live on the isle of man so we don't have a specialist exotics hospital but the surgery i go to has a vet who specialises in exotics (even though they don't really see them that often) and also, at about the same time as i got mae, another vet joined the surgery who is absolutely fantastic with exotics. she's very knowledgeable, doesn't hang about but doesn't panic either. and she has spayed a chinchilla - not a very common thing! she has saved mae's life on numerous occasions. she really cares as well which i'm sure they all do but i think some detach themselves more than others - it can't be an easy job, i certainly couldn't do it - but she gets really involved with them.
i called the emergency number earlier this week and she was on call and we decided in the end that it would be unwise to bring mae for an injection, instead give her some tablets the next day. she texted me the next day to see how she was doing even though she's off for the next two weeks!

[Jenova]

I love it when you find a good vet. I'm lucky to have found a couple. The first saved Chong's life when he went into stasis. It was only by chance she was an exotic specialist. She was also treating my rabbit. Then she moved away and I was really worried but I actually managed to find another two vets in another practice who are equally as amazing. But then in that same place there was another vet who wanted to put my rabbit to sleep because he had abscesses in his jaws, and I wanted to fight for him so I said no. I felt like he was pressurising me saying it couldn't be treated but I stood my ground. The two vets in the same place did all sorts of research for me and saved his life. You have to be so careful about finding people who actually know what they're talking about and are willing to go that little bit further for you and your pets.

[dianah]

it's so true. so glad your bunny got better. and chong. i think some vets who treat all sorts of animals don't realise that something small like a bunny or a guinea pig can mean as much to somebody as a cat or a dog.

my vet's just getting married so i told her off for selfishly taking time off for her honeymoon

[Jenova]

Just thought I'd update. He had the dental and the xray and there was nothing wrong with his teeth apart from one front tooth. The vet thinks it is a big infection that's affected his whole body. Bloods have been taken as well as a culture of the puss. No results from those yet. The vet thinks it will clear up but if it happens again he might have to go on treatment long term.

[dianah]

oh poor baby! nothing wrong with teeth is great news. i've never had big infection thankfully, my dog had one and because he's a great dane it hit him quite hard. we had to leave him in hospital overnight on a drip - it was horrible! but he's fine now not that it bears any relevance.

i would suggest your friend gets a product called 'lifeline' - it's a powder mixture you can either mix with water and syringe it or you can sprinkle it over food. my mae eats it off a spoon (mixed with water). it's got all sorts of good stuffs in it, including probiotics which are really important when a chinchilla is on antibiotics.
i ordered a tub when i adopted mae and we needed her to put weight on and someone on here recommended it. she's currently on it because she had a respiratory infection. i also gave it to the boys when they were neutered and were on two different antibiotics - their poo didn't change at all, vet was very impressed!
you can get it from here http://chocolatechinchillas.com/id6.html - it's in america but the shipping's very reasonable and i emailed dawnna as it was an emergency and she shipped it very quickly. i got 'dyne' (if you click on 'supplies') - this is thick liquid and you only use a drop or two mixed in with food and it's for sick chinchillas who are losing weight. i used it when we were trying to put weight on her but you only use it when they're sick. but good to have for emergencies!

[Jenova]

Thank you!

I wonder if it's safe for bunnies? I'll have a look as I have a very sick bunny who might be on antibiotics for life now. And obviously pass the link on to my friend too.