Sick chinchillas?

[TrishB]

Ok so I recently bought a pair of Chinchillas... I have 3 other chinchillas which are in perffect condition but me 2 new ones have been sneezing and loosing fur from around there nose and eyes ..the buck was worse then the doe and i was givin them a antibiotic prescribed by my vet but it didnt work .... it worked for a couple of days and as soon as they finished it they wer back to stage 1....i was just wondering if you have any ideas about what may be wrong with them.

[JoJo1970]

obviously you took them to the vet and I'm guess their teeth are ok? I've seen horrible things happen to chins with overgrown teeth...starting with dampness around the face and it gets rotten etc...
Hope they are going to be ok...do you know their background...some pet stores don't have a clue how to look after chins properly

[TrishB]

i no ....there teeth are perfect ive checked all of that because i had a rabbit with tooth problems and had 4 teeth removed before so i check all my animals teeth......im just hopin it's not pnuemonia

[FlickeringHope]

Are the teeth orange? White teeth conclude a calcium deficiency.

[TrishB]

no there teeth are orange i know all that ive been breedin chinchillas for a good few years and my father also had them so ive been caring for them a good bit of my life .....its ok now tho got the problem sorted vets told me yesterday there jus suffering from a basic cold from the change of house.....she advised to keep givin the antibiotic for another week and everyting should b ok

[Jennicat]

Quote: Originally Posted by TrishB Ok so I recently bought a pair of Chinchillas... I have 3 other chinchillas which are in perffect condition but me 2 new ones have been sneezing and loosing fur from around there nose and eyes ..the buck was worse then the doe and i was givin them a antibiotic prescribed by my vet but it didnt work .... it worked for a couple of days and as soon as they finished it they wer back to stage 1....i was just wondering if you have any ideas about what may be wrong with them.

How long were they on the antibiotics? "A couple of days' doesn't sound nearly long enough.

[TrishB]

i said they were ok for a couple of days not on antibiotics for a couple of days....... the male was on antibiotics over 2 weeks and as soon as he was finished it he was back to stage 1.....there both doing better now tho thank god

[Chinchi]

It sounds like fungus...
You need to get a powder you put info their dust bath... You should use it for a maximum of 1 week.
2 weeks on antibiotics sounds like a VERY long time... A normal period would be 5-7 days, where you should be able to see an affect after about 3 days. With two weeks you have a real risk of messing up their intestines.

Did you or your vet check the teeth?
It's not possible to check the molars or the roots of the molars with out an xray.
Many vets don't do this, but says it's okay anyway, and this is quite a problem.

You also need to get their lungs checked. If there's a lot of sneezing, and the antibiotics doesn't work, it might be a sign of some lung problems, where they need some more aggressive meds.

But get some fungus powder, and try that out for a week or so. It sounds like that's the problem with the fur.

[Jennicat]

2 weeks actually isn't all that long, that's the standard course for pretty much any exotic animal on any antibiotic in the US. Shorter courses (5-7 days) tend to only knock out the infection long enough for the animal to appear "better", but it often returns and it promotes the development of bacteria and diseases with high antibiotic tolerance.

If you're using an antibiotic which is safe for chinchillas, there should be no danger of "messing up their intestines". If intolerance is not noticed early in the course, there's really little reason it would randomly start affecting the intestinal flora.

[Chinchi]

If it doesn't knock out the infection within a week, it's a bad antibiotic...

[Jennicat]

Welp, I'll go contact our three exotics vets and let them know that every single antibiotic we've used for over a decade is a bad antibiotic. And then I'll call my doctors and tell them that every antibiotic I've ever been on is also a bad antibiotic.

Symptoms should start to disappear within 2-3 days of an antibiotic being given, or it is ineffective to that infection. However, it's unwise to stop an antibiotic just because the symptoms have disappeared -- it's much more common to run an entire "course" of antibiotics, which is typically 10-14 days (14 days being more common with rodents because of their preponderance of hiding symptoms as soon as they feel better). That's why when you have strep throat, they give you 10+ days of antibiotics and there's a big warning on the bottle to take the entire course, even if you feel better. Stopping as soon as symptoms disappear typically leaves some active infection in the body which has a chance to mutate and become less affected by common antibiotics.

Unfortunately, this is something that we've seen happen, and frequently animals come in that have been on several short courses of common antibiotics, and then we're forced to run a sensitivity culture on their discharge to figure out what novel antibiotic will work on the "super" infection.

[mtmaughan]

I agree with Jennicat, my vet usually prescribes antibiotics for 21 days or more.

[TrishB]

exactly jennicat

thanks for your help my chinchillas are doing better now thank god ...going to complete the antibiotic for the full 2 weeks and ill let ye no how they get on ok?

[TrishB]

there noses have stopped running and there even breathng better but going to complete the antbotic because had a rabbit b4 who coverd up symptoms and as soon as her antibiotic of a 1 week course was finished her nfection returned and as for there skin its not a fungus

[Chinchi]

Okay... we just don't do things that way, and none of my animals suffer, neither do I...