Mites help needed!

User avatar
Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Wed Apr 03, 2002 7:56 pm


Mites or fungus. Treat for mites first. Fungus if it doesn´t improve.

User avatar
KarasKavies
For the love of my girls!

Post   » Wed Apr 03, 2002 9:12 pm


My vote... mites!

Evangeline

Post   » Wed Apr 03, 2002 9:13 pm


Dobby-
Yeah, it does sound like mites.

Laura-
I don´t think you understand. I don´t mean respiratory allergies to bedding. I mean skin allergies. On occasions, I´ve heard of pigs being allergic to all wood beddings (CareFresh is wood). Their entire skin became irritated to the point they would scream from the pain of simply being touched.

I think it´s worth trying towels or newspaper bedding, as well as looking into the fungus thing.

User avatar
KarasKavies
For the love of my girls!

Post   » Wed Apr 03, 2002 9:33 pm


Dobby, don´t feel bad. I think mites are at the root of all piggie woes!

K

User avatar
Dobby
I gave what I could!

Post   » Thu Apr 04, 2002 7:19 am


Well, at least he´s not in any pain from these alleged mites.The vet is booked up until Monday, so I´m bringing him in then as he isn´t an urgent case (no wounds, no screaming in agony, no loss of appetite or playfulness...just minor hair loss and numerous little flakey scabs).
Oh, the trials and tribulations of owning and loving a pig.
My brother (the realist) said, "Isn´t it cheaper to just get another pig than to take this one to the vet?" Needless to say, I was horrified, but I didn´t say anything to my younger sibling...I just smacked him. :)

Laura823

Post   » Thu Apr 04, 2002 11:32 am


I know what you meant, Evangeline. I guess I wasn´t very clear. We did try towels for awhile (although I had a lot of problems with it...Mitzi wasn´t too happy about that arrangement!), and there was no change in her symptoms. We were using a tiny bit of Carfresh in the litter box, though. How long would it take to notice an improvement? Also, if you can´t use bedding what do you put in the litter box?

Dobby, how old is your brother? My grandmother has said that to my family on numerous occasions about our cat and the pigs. Recently my cousin´s dog had to have kidney surgery that cost hundreds, and she said the same thing. I´d beat her face in if she wasn´t my 85 year old grandmother.

Don´t worry about the mites, they´re (usually) no big deal. Nearly all pet store pigs have them. Thank God for Ivermectin!

Evangeline

Post   » Thu Apr 04, 2002 11:37 am


Laura-
Hello? Didn´t I just suggest recycled newspaper pellets?

Laura823

Post   » Thu Apr 04, 2002 12:55 pm


Sorry, I must be dense today. I thought you meant sheets of newspaper.

I´m going to put in a towel now and see how it goes with no bedding at all. I don´t know how I´m going to keep it down, though. The cage she is in now is too small to put bricks in the corners. She should be in her new cage within a week or two, though.

User avatar
Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Thu Apr 04, 2002 1:01 pm


Make sure she has protective houses to go in with a soft washcloth or something to sit on. That way she might not try to hide.

Laura823

Post   » Thu Apr 04, 2002 2:01 pm


Okay, I just cleaned out the cage and put a towel down. Mitzi is SO mad. The first thing she did was go in her Pigloo, start digging and chewing like crazy, and pulled the towels away from the wall, up under the base of the Pigloo. Then she flipped over her food dish (the ´untippable´ one) and then flipped over her Pigloo. Now, 5 minutes later the entire cage looks like a tornado went through it. The towel is a crumpled heap in the middle of the floor, her houses are tipped over and her food dish is tipped over. She has absolutely no flat space to move on top.

I am so frustrated! I just don´t know what to do! Now my mom is really mad at me because we´re having so many problems with the pigs. She´s constantly yelling at me and she´s mad because I haven´t found the "solution" yet.

Is it me? Am I giving off some kind of bad vibes or something? Does ANYONE else have pigs that behave like this?

I also feel terrible because before I cleaned out the cage, I was sitting in a chair next to Mitzi´s cage and holding Piglet in my lap. She was SO agitated just to be next to Mitzi´s cage that she started freaking out and snapping at me and somehow managed to jump right off my lap. It happened so fast I couldn´t do anything about it. She fell down the side of the chair to the floor. She didn´t get hurt but I feel awful about it.

If she´s going to get that upset just from being near Mitzi, is it really realistic to think about keeping them in side-by-side cages as I´d planned? I have this feeling we are going to go to all the trouble and expense of making the new divided cage and then it isn´t going to work out. THEN what??? The room is small and we don´t have the space to keep two large cages that are seperate from each other. I´d put them downstairs in the rec room, but my dad absolutely won´t let me.

Also, I don´t think I´ve posted about this here (I have on CM) but Piglet´s bar chewing is getting out of control! I had to get up at !5:30! this morning to feed them (usually that stops it - if I don´t feed them as soon as it starts, she´ll go for hours on end until the food comes). But she ate, and then started right back up again. This is really interfering with my sleep. My room is right next door to theirs and the racket is unbelievable - it sounds like someone drilling into cement. And I´ve tried just about everything to stop it, bitter sprays, ingnoring it hoping she´ll give up, etc. Several people have suggested to me blocking off the area that she chews with houses or higher walls, but it´s not that simple. She will chew anywhere so I would have to block off the entire perimeter of the cage. If there´s ONE bar she has access to she´ll grab it and start shaking it and chewing it with all her might.

I´m sorry to complain so much but I can´t believe all the problems I´ve had with these pigs. It´s just been one problem after another ever since Day 1! I´ve done everything right, and EVERYTHING goes wrong! HELP!

User avatar
Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Thu Apr 04, 2002 5:38 pm


I´m sorry to make work for you, but can you start from the beginning and describe how many pets you have and their cages? Why are they apart? Without knowing anything, I would suggest if the cage was large enough to put ridgid plastic on the walls that could not be grabbed and shaken. If they are apart and want to be together, they may persist in trying to break out. Sewing a tie on the edge of the towel and ensuring that the heavy string cannot be bitten might let you secure it in place. I wish you were nearby. I might be able to suggest another living arrangement. They don´t all have to be expensive. The more space the less cage rattling you will have.

My daughter had a hamster that would climb to the top of the cage and chew on it making an awful racket. Do you have any other animals in the house? If you could give them more space and no animal would bother them, you might be able to line the floor with some linoleum, a towel on top, bathrooms in the corners -- something so they don´t feel trapped.

Anyway, pics or a real good description of your animals and everything would help (what you feed them and what their food dishes are like).

Laura823

Post   » Thu Apr 04, 2002 6:16 pm


Oh, brother...be forewarned, this is going to be very long!

For starters...I have two guinea pigs and a cat. The cat isn´t a problem - she doesn´t spend a lot of time in the room and even when she does, she doesn´t bother the pigs. The cages are cat-proof though, because she does occasionally get up on them (the pigs don´t mind!). Piglet is in a 2x5 cubes and coroplast cage. Mitzi is in a hagen rabbit cage (5 sq ft) but I´m planning on making the C&C cage 2x7 with a divider down the middle so they can share. That is the absolute biggest we have room for. Free range is not an option. I live at home with my parents (I´m 17) and they absolutely will not have it. They do get floor time. Mitzi gets it more often than Piglet, as you will learn why further down. By the way, I am quite sure that Piglet´s bar-rattling doesn´t have anything to do with Mitzi - she has been doing this since long before we got Mitzi.

I find it really difficult to describe Piglet to people. Aside from her medical problem (chronic colitis) she just is...difficult. She´s very, very stressed, Very high-strung. Very aggressive. A biter. Just about anything can stress her out and totally throw her off. She is not a "normal" pig. Even floor time stresses her out. What she really wants is to be left alone in her cage. she seems quite content this way - walking around, clucking, eating hay and popcorning.

We got Mitzi about a year after we got Piglet, hoping they´d be able to live together. We introduced them gradually during floor time, just like everyone says, for a few weeks. Mitzi wanted to be friends with Piglet and I wanted to just let them sort it out but Piglet kept biting Mitzi (I don´t just mean nipping, I mean serious biting). She kept attacking her out of nowhere. Piglet bites really hard, and I knew it wouldn´t be long until Mitzi was seriously hurt, so finally after a few weeks of trying, I decided to give up (at least temporarily). Maybe if we could let them take a LONG time to get used to each other, eventually they would. But then there is the problem of Piglet´s chronic colitis (which we have determined is definitely aggravated by stress). The stress of being with Mitzi just about did her in. Every time they were together, she would poop constantly (like 1 poop per second, literally) SCREAMING in pain. Piglet is stressed enough as it is. I certainly don´t want to make things worse for her or cause any unnecessary pain. I thought that as she got used to Mitzi, she´d be less stressed and her bowels would calm down, but that wasn´t the case. And then of course they´d both get a ton of Piglet´s pop mashed into their feet (ew).

So, certainly for the forseeable future, keeping them together just isn´t an option. I´ve had quite a few discussions on this with the folks at CM, and pretty much exhausted all suggestions on what to do. Keeping them apart seems to be the only doable thing at this time.

I´m not sure what you mean about having "ties" on the towel? What do you attatch the ties to when the cage is smooth plastic? I don´t know what´s with Mitzi and the towels - but she definitely hates them. She much prefers bedding. I´ve never had a problem with the towels and Piglet - she´s never even tried to pull it up or go under it. I´m also not sure what you mean about the plastic on the walls - all the way around? Wouldn´t that be a problem with ventilation? And how would you attach it?

Piglet is really pretty good (aside from the bar chewing) as long as she is alone. Mitzi, though, really wants a companion desperately. There is no way my parents will let me get another pig, though. We really can´t afford it anyway. If I could get a part-time job to help pay, it might be worth trying to persuade them, but I am too sick to work.

What I feed them...well, pellets (timothy for Piglet, alfalfa for Mitzi) unlimited Timothy hay, of course, and a cup of veggies per pig, per day. (Divided into two meals...one in the morning - though it will soon be the middle of the night if it keeps going like this! - and one in the late afternoon.) They get a good variety, though they have been rather deprived of romaine lately, considering the quality/prices! The food dishes that the pellets are in are those earthenware/ceramic ones with the straight sides that are supposed to be untippable. (Yeah, right!)

I´ve been wanting to get pics online for ages, but our scanner is broken. If/when it is fixed, I will show everyone the pics they been long awaiting! I have some really good ones.

Thanks for being so patient about all the problems I´ve been having with them. I think the posters at CM are getting tired of hearing about all the troubles with them. You really must be wondering by now, "How could two little pigs have this many problems...what the hell is that girl doing to them?!"

Anyway, I´m off for now to go give Mitzi some floor time. Sorry this is so long!
Last edited by Laura823 on Thu Apr 04, 2002 6:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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