4 year old female is squeaking when urinating

Post » Sat Jul 21, 2018 8:40 am

I added some crops of your pics to show the teeth better (I think the board software might be shrinking them to fit into the post).

You could well be correct about some pain related to Abigail's tooth. Sometimes with a broken tooth, it needs to grow out once or twice to stabilize (there can be injury to the root that is healing).

duskern · Post » Sun Jul 22, 2018 7:34 am

Do you think I should take her to the vet tomorrow? There's clearly something wrong with her teeth I think. She is still eating both pellets and hay, as well as some of the lighter vegtables like cucumber. I can tell she is being really careful when eating vegtables.

bpatters · Post » Sun Jul 22, 2018 2:12 pm

I would.

duskern · Post » Mon Jul 23, 2018 8:33 am

We ended up taking both Nellie and Abigail to the vet. They both have some issues related to their teeth. They are getting their teeth in question shortened a bit, and will be home again within the next hour or so. Also, Abigail did have a broken tooth like I thought :) Nothing really to be happy about, but I guess I'm not too bad at taking care of my furry girls :)

duskern · Post » Tue Jul 31, 2018 3:48 pm

Everything seems to be going fine with Abigail and Nellie, after having their teeth done. We also had the vet take a follow up x-ray of Abigail, to check her for stones. There was nothing to see :)

We have had a problem with Nellie making this weird snorting sound when breathing. It's on off most of the time, and we think it's related to dust in her nose, or something like that. That is the best explanation we have had for it. Our vet recommended us getting a water atomizer for spraying the saw dust in their cage, and their hay. Should help bind the dust or something like that. She recommended using demineralised water for some reason, and I forgot to ask her why.

Has anyone got any experience with something like this?

bpatters · Post » Tue Jul 31, 2018 3:54 pm

Why is there sawdust in the cage? You don't want them on wet bedding, or they'll wind up with bumblefoot.

Demineralized water can have less calcium in it, but don't use distilled water. You can use filtered water that you buy or filter yourself, or reverse osmosis water.

rjespicer · Post » Tue Jul 31, 2018 6:12 pm

Ok bearing in mind I know nothing when I looked at the pics my first though was the green stuff I could see at the bottom of her mouth looked like a bit of finely sliced cucumber stuck in there. Or am I missing something? Bit of a novice here so just trying to work out what to look for with our 3 girls if they have issues.

bpatters · Post » Tue Jul 31, 2018 6:28 pm

Looks like some kind of food to me.

duskern · Post » Wed Aug 01, 2018 3:33 am

bpatters wrote: ↑Tue Jul 31, 2018 3:54 pm Why is there sawdust in the cage? You don't want them on wet bedding, or they'll wind up with bumblefoot.

Demineralized water can have less calcium in it, but don't use distilled water. You can use filtered water that you buy or filter yourself, or reverse osmosis water.

We have always used sawdust as bedding. We try to keep it dry, and remove it when it gets wet. A lot of the time there will be hay on top, since they get the hay for eating all over the place.

Why is it so important to not use normal tap water?

Post » Wed Aug 01, 2018 9:10 am

It sounds like one of your problems is the sawdust. Wood products should not be dusty or they can affect the respiratory tract. There are other low cost solutions for you.

duskern · Post » Wed Aug 01, 2018 10:33 am

Lynx wrote: ↑Wed Aug 01, 2018 9:10 am It sounds like one of your problems is the sawdust. Wood products should not be dusty or they can affect the respiratory tract. There are other low cost solutions for you.

We have always used sawdust. It's not the very fine grained kind, but a very raw one. It's sold at a shop that sells hay, pellets and other related products for guinea pigs, rabbits, dogs and so on. Our Nellie is the only one having the problems as far as I can tell. It could also be dust from the hay I guess. I want to fix this somehow, but I need to figure out the best way to do so.

duskern · Post » Wed Aug 01, 2018 4:19 pm

I'm not really sure if what I'm writing is correct, but in danish there's only one word for sawdust, no matter how fine it is. What we use is more pieces of wooden leftovers from using a drill on a piece of wood. I will post some pictures tomorrow. I am interested in hearing about better alternatives of course.