Chinchilla Community Forums
Chinchillas => Health => Topic started by: dianah on September 16, 2011, 03:06:37 PM
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fluffy's nearly three years old and lives with her two daughters. i have noticed that there are crumbled pellets in their bowl but thought that maybe it came from the pellet bag as they are all eating hay and are keen on chews - demolish them without problems. then i saw her last week at the bowl, picking up nuggets, taking a few bits and then putting them back in and taking another one. thought she was being a picky girl!
yesterday fluffy seemed a little less active than usual so i got her out to look at her and she felt smaller. i weighed her and she'd lost weight but i am not entirely sure what her 'normal' weight is as she'd been pregnant twice (she was a boy who turned out to be a girl so when we found out she was a girl, she'd had triplets and was already pregnant with luella) so it was always pregnant/nursing/post nursing. still i think she should be bigger than she is now. she didn't want any chews but she had oats and alfalfa hay.
obviously my first thought was teeth - i checked her front teeth, they're fine and they're the right colour. i booked her in to go see the vet so her back teeth can be checked and anything else investigated if this is ok. she's going in on tuesday.
today her activity levels seem back to normal. i've given her a dried rose hip - these are quite hard so i thought if it's her mouth, she probably wouldn't want to eat that but she had it without any trouble. i also gave her a very hard compressed grass pellet and again, she chewed away.
so i don't know. if it is not her teeth - but this is to be seen - what else could it be?
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Well where its doesnt appear to be her teeth im not sure =o i just know the two times murry got like that the first time was becasue she broke a tooth chewing on the bar of her cage (split right down the middle and half snapped off) and the second time was when i gave her her firs lava ledge, she powered through the thing swallowed alot of it and it gave her a upset tummy so shed eat half a pellet and put the rest back =/ i had to fed her critical care for a wile to get her weight back up.
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i guess the first step is check the teeth. then we'll know more. i'm not exactly keen on giving her critical care given that she's eating by herself and is still a pretty good weight for a chinchilla (615g). i do have a healthy supply of critical care at home so should she stop eating i'll hand feed but at the moment, especially if it is teeth, the more solid food she eats the better.
poor girl :(
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She really weighs that much =) when i brought murry in at a year old for her broken tooth she weighed 614grams and they said she was big for a chinchilla lol
well hopefuly things will get better for fluffy!
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she was over 800g when pregnant! with only one baby!!! fatso! my rescue girl managed to weigh 420g at one point before we got her well. she's around 500g. she's only little. plus she's missing a leg.
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Wow thats quite a pregger weight =o aw whys the chinchi missing a leg? how well does she get around without it? im always curious about thouse things.
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the story i was given (she was already missing a leg when i got her) was that she chewed it off when her previous owners were out and she got it trapped somehow. which happens. however, they did not even take her to the vet for pain relief and antibiotics and make sure she was ok. my vet was pleased with how well she managed to chew it off, there are no sharp bits or anything, it doesn't cause her any problems!
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Poor baby =( that story sounds lil fishy to me but still. Im glad she has you to take care of her =)
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she was very nearly dead when i found her - she was at a rescue, thankfully i never got to meet the people who had her before and they have left the island so i hopefully never will. all her health problems stem from neglect.
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oh i hope she is okay.
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thank you. i hope so too. i am really not sure it's her teeth, i gave them lots of wood to chew on yesterday and she was properly going for it. anyway, she'll have her teeth checked on tuesday and if they're all ok, i'll have to monitor her weight closely. you never know, it may be her normal weight. but she was definitely 'off' on that day when she wasn't keen on eating anything and all.. we'll see! she seems perfectly fine at the moment.
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it really can be so scarey sometimes owning these guys.
prayers are definately being sent to you and your little one.
j
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ah... it is her teeth. one that the vet can see at the back is growing at a wrong angle. she's going in for a dental on friday and they will obviously know more then. boo :( the good news is that we caught it early so hopefully we can fix it.
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I hope it goes okay for her, fingers crossed. Like you said, at least you caught it early. I'll have my fingers firmly crossed for you on Fri.
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thank you. dental went ok though obviously the girl hates me now for taking her. unfortunately, it was worse than we originally thought. her back teeth are growing at a wrong angle - they're not simply misaligned as you see with malocclusion but are just sort of tilted. i am somewhat confused how has this only shown now that she's nearly three years old. so, we'll see what happens. she's going to go for a check up in about three months but we anticipate having her teeth done on a regular basis. you never know though, we thought mae would need a dental every 10 weeks or so and she's not needed another one since the first and she had a tooth pulled out so in theory...
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Best of luck!
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thanks j. she's not eating still :( she eats critical care off a spoon and she's keeping her weight. but i want her to start eating properly :(