I revived from the dead to ask a couple questions, my lovely Miss Misty is having some eye irritation issues. This has progressed about two weeks.
She has mostly pawed at her left eye and the fur is all displaced, the right eye just started getting ruffled a couple days ago. There was a lot of whiteish discharge on the right eye this morning, I’ve hardly seen any on the left eye. There is a little bit in the picture though.
Everything else about her has been normal, physically. She was a little more clingy today but otherwise has been emotionally stable as well.
(EDIT: See here for pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/minibyte/tags/eye/ something isn’t playing nice with my iPad.)
I did some research and similar cases are typically caused by some sort of environmental change.
I’m looking at taking her to the vet in a couple days to have it looked at, but in the meantime, I’m trying to locate the culprit and have a couple questions.
Culprits:
-The seasonal vent:
My folks are more temperature peculiar than my chins are, as a result, I close my room vents in winter/fall and open them in spring/summer. (So that the room stays cool enough of the fuzzbutts
)
I've had to move the last couple of years and in the current house the vent was only open for a couple months before closing it up again. The vents are opening for the second time in this house, lo-and-behold, eye issue.
However, this issue didn’t happen last year… but Misty has always been the closest to the vent in this house. Had the air filter/particle filter thing vacuumed a couple days ago and I understand these things take time to go down, but her right eye started getting irritated at the same time... :thinking2:
-New bedding:
At the same time as opening the vents (did I say that was 3-4 weeks ago? If I didn’t… well, I did now) ) I bought a new bag of bedding, It was Petco Aspen. (Dust free)
The shavings were smaller than the previous bag and it was no longer listed as hypoallergenic (The previous bags I bought had a hypoallergenic label, this one is simply listed as dust and oil free, same brand though.)
My boys tend to sleep on the bottom of their cage, and haven’t been doing so as often with the new bedding. The twins always sleep on the top of their cage… and Misty always sleeps on the bottom of hers (she has a shelf, but that appears to be exclusively for chewing her toy and visiting me) Her cage is also the shortest of the three (and before anyone comments, I’m replacing all the cages with ferret nations in a couple of weeks), so she’s always the closest to the bedding. None of the other chins have shown any signs of eye irritation…
-That time on the floor:
I really wish I could be more specific here. At some point, one of my human family members moved her cage to the floor on the opposite side of my room.
Normally, her cage sits above the twins cage, approx 30 in off the floor. The problem spawned while she was down there. (Or I noticed it there.) There was an ancient bag of hay in the vicinity and that area is much more heavily travelled than her normal spot (thus the possibility for outside germs to reach her…)
I moved her back to her normal spot a few days after discovering the issue, but it’s been over a week and it has only gotten worse.
Again… I wish I could give more specifics.
-New Dusting Schedule:
I'm going to be honest here. I have been horrible when it comes to dust baths. The other humans have issues with the dust, so doing it inside the cage has been a nightmare, excuse, excuse etc. Anyway, someone at work had a broken book wheeler box thing (It’s a big box on wheels, with a handle that pulls out) and offered it to me. It’s made a perfect little bathing area for the chins. I just stick the chin in with the dust bath while cleaning the cage and everybody wins.
So now they’re bathing once/week. I understand this isn’t the recommended yet, and nobody appears to have dry skin, but I’m wondering if the leap in dusting frequency could cause this…
Okay! Sorry for the wall of text, I uh… I'm tired! Yeah! That excuse will work! (No, really, its 2 AM here)
Questions:
1) With this issue currently going on, is it safe/reccomended to dustbathe? I know her eye is all exposed right now, and we don’t need any more issues than present.
2) How many days would it take to see a difference in removing the culprit? (I'm heading down to WalMart tomorrow morning to pick up some fleece and a ceramic dish, for litter training, to try and remove bedding from the situation.)
3) (Related to #2) Would a vet visit be required to remove the issue? Can it go away on it’s own? (If it looks like what I’ve read)
4) (Earning the most ridiculous question asked award) How big of ceramic dish should I use for litter training? Should I remove all the litter at once, or is litter training feasible because the amount of bedding would be small?
Anyway, any help would be appreciated, and thanks for reading my wall of text, even partial answers help.
She has mostly pawed at her left eye and the fur is all displaced, the right eye just started getting ruffled a couple days ago. There was a lot of whiteish discharge on the right eye this morning, I’ve hardly seen any on the left eye. There is a little bit in the picture though.
Everything else about her has been normal, physically. She was a little more clingy today but otherwise has been emotionally stable as well.
(EDIT: See here for pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/minibyte/tags/eye/ something isn’t playing nice with my iPad.)
I did some research and similar cases are typically caused by some sort of environmental change.
I’m looking at taking her to the vet in a couple days to have it looked at, but in the meantime, I’m trying to locate the culprit and have a couple questions.
Culprits:
-The seasonal vent:
My folks are more temperature peculiar than my chins are, as a result, I close my room vents in winter/fall and open them in spring/summer. (So that the room stays cool enough of the fuzzbutts
)I've had to move the last couple of years and in the current house the vent was only open for a couple months before closing it up again. The vents are opening for the second time in this house, lo-and-behold, eye issue.
However, this issue didn’t happen last year… but Misty has always been the closest to the vent in this house. Had the air filter/particle filter thing vacuumed a couple days ago and I understand these things take time to go down, but her right eye started getting irritated at the same time... :thinking2:
-New bedding:
At the same time as opening the vents (did I say that was 3-4 weeks ago? If I didn’t… well, I did now
) ) I bought a new bag of bedding, It was Petco Aspen. (Dust free)The shavings were smaller than the previous bag and it was no longer listed as hypoallergenic (The previous bags I bought had a hypoallergenic label, this one is simply listed as dust and oil free, same brand though.)
My boys tend to sleep on the bottom of their cage, and haven’t been doing so as often with the new bedding. The twins always sleep on the top of their cage… and Misty always sleeps on the bottom of hers (she has a shelf, but that appears to be exclusively for chewing her toy and visiting me) Her cage is also the shortest of the three (and before anyone comments, I’m replacing all the cages with ferret nations in a couple of weeks), so she’s always the closest to the bedding. None of the other chins have shown any signs of eye irritation…
-That time on the floor:
I really wish I could be more specific here. At some point, one of my human family members moved her cage to the floor on the opposite side of my room.
Normally, her cage sits above the twins cage, approx 30 in off the floor. The problem spawned while she was down there. (Or I noticed it there.) There was an ancient bag of hay in the vicinity and that area is much more heavily travelled than her normal spot (thus the possibility for outside germs to reach her…)
I moved her back to her normal spot a few days after discovering the issue, but it’s been over a week and it has only gotten worse.
Again… I wish I could give more specifics.
-New Dusting Schedule:
I'm going to be honest here. I have been horrible when it comes to dust baths. The other humans have issues with the dust, so doing it inside the cage has been a nightmare, excuse, excuse etc. Anyway, someone at work had a broken book wheeler box thing (It’s a big box on wheels, with a handle that pulls out) and offered it to me. It’s made a perfect little bathing area for the chins. I just stick the chin in with the dust bath while cleaning the cage and everybody wins.
So now they’re bathing once/week. I understand this isn’t the recommended yet, and nobody appears to have dry skin, but I’m wondering if the leap in dusting frequency could cause this…
Okay! Sorry for the wall of text, I uh… I'm tired! Yeah! That excuse will work! (No, really, its 2 AM here)
Questions:
1) With this issue currently going on, is it safe/reccomended to dustbathe? I know her eye is all exposed right now, and we don’t need any more issues than present.
2) How many days would it take to see a difference in removing the culprit? (I'm heading down to WalMart tomorrow morning to pick up some fleece and a ceramic dish, for litter training, to try and remove bedding from the situation.)
3) (Related to #2) Would a vet visit be required to remove the issue? Can it go away on it’s own? (If it looks like what I’ve read)
4) (Earning the most ridiculous question asked award) How big of ceramic dish should I use for litter training? Should I remove all the litter at once, or is litter training feasible because the amount of bedding would be small?
Anyway, any help would be appreciated, and thanks for reading my wall of text, even partial answers help.
