Chinchilla Community Forums
Chinchillas => Health => Topic started by: rewNboots on July 28, 2012, 04:39:48 PM
-
(http://i45.tinypic.com/v4s1h3.jpg)this is davin he is my chinn he is about 9 month and i have recently noticed this what looks like ry skin on the back of his ears just wondering if it is anything to be worried about
-
Monitor this for changes and don't rule out the possibility of fungal infection. It might just go away in a couple of days on its own. There seems to be red skin on the base of the ear. Is it like this on both sides? Are there any signs of scratching?
How often are you dusting this chinchilla? How long does it stay in the dust bath? What kind of bedding are you using? What is his diet like?
-
Try bag balm maybe.
-
he does scratch sometimes when hes cleaning himself its been like that for a week or so now. we clean his cages twice a week tuesday and friday and he gets a bath on those days. we use carefresh bedding. he stays in the bath for about 5 min and eats oxbow pellets and vitakraft timothy hay
-
It's normal to scratch when grooming. It's not normal to scratch until it's red or leaving marks. If is were fungus I would expect it to noticeably spread during that week and usually there's some hair loss on the face associated with that when it spreads.
I hear that rubbing bag balm onto the skin can help heal it up if it's just dry skin. If it's fungus you'll need to medicate your dust bath instead.
I'm suspecting the care fresh bedding because I know someone else who recently had this problem with it. I think it can dry the skin out when rolled in and too much oil gets absorbed. Kind of like dusting too frequently.
It sounds like you have a good dust bath regimen and diet. See if temporarily changing it to one dust bath a week can clear this up. Also you consider switching to kiln-dried pine bedding. I'm not an expert on this so maybe someone can offer some further advice.