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[dianah]

i've read that pregnancies are riskier than neutering. mind you, i've had a chin die from neutering and had two litters without deaths, that was by a hair though, fluffy had mastitis when she had the triplets so couldn't nurse, i think i got about 4 hours of sleep in the first week. she took over three weeks in, thank god. but ffynn stayed at 35g for over a week and i absolutely dreaded going in that room thinking i would find one or more of them dead.

my boys were 10 months when neutered. chinchi was over three years old and he did have a reaction to anaesthetic, this however was after the surgery to remove the puss capsule after he developed an infection - so he's been very sick for two months and putting them under repeatedly increases the risk, sadly there was no other option.
i'm sure your vet will advise you against neutering if there are any problems and then at least you'll have the info on that aspect.

just remember you need to keep him separate for 6 weeks after the surgery as he still can get her pregnant within that time, if you decide to go for it.

[Jhenderson27]

I was told a month.  Anyone got a concrete number on this.  My boy Titan has proved he carrys more than a starter pistol so maybe a little longer wont hurt.

[dianah]

i've read that people had pregnancies after six weeks but generally six weeks is enough. i guess it's possibly individual as well but i'm doing six weeks just in case. at least in your case if she gets pregnant it's not too much of a disaster. ffynn would be getting his mum and sisters pregnant  and spock's going in with mae who's got some many health problems it would probably kill her!

[Jhenderson27]

I so dont need more Kits....read the post i have in General discussion under dehydration on page 2 to see my story.  Its been a hell of a weekend.

[dianah]

i know. i just meant that if an accident happened, there's no genetic tie or existing health problems. not that 'if it happens it happens!' i'll go check out news about the poor baby!

[Jhenderson27]

No poor baby.  Shandy is doing good. And our new friends Elise and Lucky are as well.

[AnnieHank]

So we've discussed it with our vet and my boyfriend and I have discussed it at length and we've talked it over with our priest and baker and everyone else we come into contact with!!! We've decided that neutering is the option for us. The vet will do a pre- op check on Hank before she goes ahead and if she's in any doubt, she won't do a thing. I'm still concerned that he's too old because he's 8, but the vet insists that it's routine and he'll be fine.
I'm wondering how this will work though. If I've to keep Hank away from Annie for 6 weeks, won't they get lonely? could I put buddy (male kit) in with him once he is weaned? Then Annie will have Pixie (female kit) for company too.
When Buddy is a few months older, I could get him neutered then too and all 4 could live together happily ever after?

[AnnieHank]

I collected Hank from the vet this morning after getting him neutered. I must have seemed like the craziest pet owner; I asked the vet a million questions and was such a basket case when I was leaving him there!
The operation went well and he seems good. I'm going to keep him in a cage beside the others by himself for the next few weeks but to make sure that reintroduction goes as smoothly as possible, I'll let them have supervised play time in eachothers cage each day. He's very obvious about his intentions when she's in heat so I reckon I could pull him out if he starts getting overfriendly! The only thing is that he's not going to the toilet too well at the moment but the vet gave us medicine for that so fingers crossed it won't develop into a situation. Fingers crossed for the next few days and thanks so much to y'all for all your advice.

[dianah]

yay! fab! glad it went well! i kept checking the wounds twice a day - morning and evening to make sure there weren't any changes (there were so we had a few trips to the vet) - even if you think it looks insignificant, have it checked out anyway.

is he in a single level cage? he shouldn't have shelves for at least a week so he doesn't rip stitches.

i would advise against letting him play with his girl. you will not be able to pull him out in time, it takes seconds. he also needs to be alone for 7-10 days while he's healing.

i did find they did not exactly poo as normal until the day after. is it lactulose he's been given for not pooing? also, if he's on antibiotics, it's a good idea to add probiotics to his diet, you can get them from the vet if you've not got any.

i'm sending some good healing vibes in your direction!

[AnnieHank]

Thanks Dianah, we're keeping a very close eye on his wound. We've to bring him back to the vet on Tuesday for a wound check so hopefully there won't be any issues, but we'll catch it if there is. There are no high shelves in his cage so he should be okay. Tthe vet gave him a large shot of antibiotics after the op but wouldn't give me any to take home. She was adamant that he wouldn't need them. I'll be straight back to her like lightening if anything out of the ordinary occurs!
God love him, we just gave him the medicine there and some critical care and he really just wanted to be left alone. He was nipping a little bit which is really out of character for him, he must really be feeling sorry for himself. I can't wait till he's back to normal. I do feel a bit guilty for putting him through this but in the long term it's better for all of them. Poor Annie is such a reluctant mother, I don't want to put her through that again!
How are your lot getting on?

[dianah]

well.. my vets changed their treatment procedures after chinchi got this massive infection after he'd been given only a post op dose of antibiotics (via injection after surgery). i talked to them at length before i had the boys neutered and we agreed that they will need a full course of antibiotics rather than just post op. they ended up being on additional antibiotic and a prolonged course at that because ffynn had a swelling and we didn't want it to turn into an abscess and one of spock's wounds showed a sign of infection.

i do believe that if chinchi had a full course of antibiotics, it would have given him a better chance. we'll never know, of course. I understand that antibiotics do upset the guts and all but a two week course should not cause any harm on a healthy chin as long as you keep providing probiotics etc. my boys were on a high dose for nearly a month and their poos didn't change at all (this was surprising to both me and the vet)
I'm of course not saying that your boy will get sick. I think it's standard procedure not to give a full course of antibiotics to chinchillas. but i think those who do get sick would have benefited from having antibiotics in their system.

does he have pain relief? a lot of vets think that a pain relief shot after surgery is all they need but it's not really the case. i was sterilised a couple of years ago and they realised (after surgery!!!) that i couldn't have the standard post surgical pain relief so my options were codeine and paracetamol (headache pills!) or morphine (but i'd have to stay in hospital overnight). so i had codeine and paracetamol as i stupidly wanted to go home and i was in a super high amount of pain for the first twelve hours or so (after all, they 'stabbed' me through my stomach twice!) and i was still in a moderate amount of pain for days after. i think the worst thing was that i was totally unprepared for the pain, i was told to expect 'mild discomfort'!
so i would imagine it's the same for them.

mine are good! we've started introductions!

[AnnieHank]

How are introductions going Dianah?
Vet didn't give pain relief for him, she insisted that he didn't need it and it would lower his immune system. It's been a couple of days so hopefully he's not still in pain.
We're bringing him back to the vet for a wound check in the morning. It looks fine so hopefully it is. He's still not eating much or poohing right but we're dutifully shoving the medicine and critical care in as gently as possible. It's such an awful ordeal for him though, my heart goes out to him. He's figured out all the best wriggles to avoid it and keeps hiding his head under my hand, as if he thinks we can't see him if he can't see us! I really hate this part, fingers crossed he starts eating properly soon and we can stop annoying him.

[dianah]

the intros are not going as well as i had hoped! i thought spock and mae would be really easy because they were grooming faces through the cage. and they're ok, groom faces for a bit.. but then they start mounting each other and it gets a bit heated. no biting or any nastiness but i'm still not keen. especially as mae only has one back leg.

the other lot, ffynn and the three girls, there's no mounting but ffynn is rather scared of them. he's ok for a bit an then it gets all too much for him and he goes and hides!!!

it's so weird, with fluffy and chinchi, it was very definite. he wanted to kill her for the first two months, then he decided that actually he rather liked her and would like to groom her face for the next two hours. this lot are difficult! you think you've cracked it and then they mess it up! i think more playdates and patience will hopefully sort it out. at least no one's trying to hurt anybody.

aww, i hope your poor little boy starts eating soon. i wonder why he's not eating.. chinchi only stopped eating when he developed the infection, he was eating as normal after the surgery (that's one of the reasons we didn't suspect anything was wrong) and the boys never stopped eating. does he not like critical care? which critical care have you got? if you're in the us, you can get the apple & banana flavoured cc (we can't get that over here) and see if he likes that better. or you could try the fine grind cc - mae loves this yet she won't have the normal stuff.

how do you prepare it? do you syringe cc into him? i found with chinchi, he liked his made into a paste rather than liquid but it needed to be moist. he also liked it warm. mae and her fine grind cc, she likes that as a paste as well. if you syringe it, you could try giving it to him off your finger - just be careful, mae just licked it off, chinchi bit so hard into my finger it bled so he had it off a spoon after that.

[AnnieHank]

I'm sorry to hear your intros aren't going that smoothly. From what I've heard about chinchilla introductions/ reintroductions, it doesn't sound hopeless to me though, just early stages.

The vet had said to us that it was likely that he'd stop eating for a bit after surgery and that his little tummy wouldn't be right for a few days so it was expected. What I didn't expect was his reaction to the syringe feeding! When we treated him for pneumonia last year, I remember him being a little wriggly but it was bearable. It was Annie I was worried most about because she was preganant and we had to be very very careful how we held her.

The critical care we're giving him is the regular fine grind stuff. I live in Ireland so I'm not sure there's too much choice of flavours here. I just took what the vet gave us and had been feeding him herself. We mix it into a paste and try syringe it into his mouth. I swear more gets on his fur and our clothes and the carpet than in his mouth though! We've had marginal success with putting a little on our fingers and he licks it off but that only works for a ml or two.

I'm just back from the vet, we had the wound check. She said there's no infection and he's doing okay. Pooing a little but still not much. The reason his recovery is so slow is that he's quite old for the surgery (he's 8 ). The vet suggested some orange flavoured baby food which we've bought and will mix with his critical care this evening. She also gave us some pain meds for him and anaestethic cream to put on the area. I'm a bit annoyed she wouldn't give it to us initially though, that means the poor little guy's been in pain the last few days and she could have prevented that!
Ah well, this should only last a few more days and then hopefully he'll be his happy self again.

[dianah]

ah, see, i completely forgot he was an older boy. well the good news is he's got pain meds now and should hopefully be more comfortable.

i live on the isle of man and i can't get the apple & banana flavour here so i'm guessing it's not available in ireland either. but if the vet thinks he's in pain (which i'm guessing must be the case if she's giving him painkillers) then i guess it's not surprising he's not too mad on eating. have you tried giving him some rolled oats? i find that they eat that even if they don't want to eat anything else.

re baby food - just be careful. he is very likely to love it - we gave some to mae when she needed to put weight on for her xray and she would not eat anything. she loved the baby food but it made her have diarrhoea, really quite bad. so i'd say, just monitor him. it takes 12-15 hours to digest food so keep an eye i know that people have used baby food without any trouble so hopefully that will be the case! if not, they can give you this fibreplex paste at the vets. if he does get diarrhoea, you need to act fast as they get dehydrated very quickly and i think it would be even more detrimental post surgery. (sorry, i don't want to scare you, i'm sure it will be all without problems, but just in case!)

our intros.. well, it's not bad really. it could be a lot worse! it's just confusing! i sometimes think 'ok, they're ok now!' and then five minutes later they're not.