sick chippy

[lynn]

hi
i was enquirng if anyone knows or had a chippy with bacterial infection. my hubby went into the avairy early this morning and saw harriot our 5 year old female struggling out of her box, she was wobbling, looked slightly thin, and alsoher body temperture went down. we took her up the vets and said she might have a bacterial infection, gave her liquid antiobiotics to give to her through a syrinch.  we kept herout ofthe avairy and put her in a indoor cage separate from the others. at the moment she is taking the liquid fromthe syrinch and still eating. but she is very wobbly when she walks. we are not really sure if it isbacterial infection or just heat exhaustion. im hoping that she pulls through.
has anyone else had a chipmunk who had this problem. i am really worried about her.
lynn

[pinkpill]

i cant offer any advice but i hope she gets better soon  its awful when our pets get ill 

[alan]

My first chipmunk Woody had similar symptoms. Unfortunately he lost his fight in the end. He ate and drank up to the last minutes of his life. My only recommendation would be to carry on caring for him indoors. Ensure that he is kept warm, ideally under a red light. Chipmunks are small so pinpointing the cause can be almost impossible. But with constant fresh water, food, warmth and care his system might fight off the problem. Hope this helps and your chip pulls through.

[jennyb]

Hi Lynn, Not had a chippie with a bacterial infection but i'm not sure this is what your chippie has. Harriot's symptons sound VERY similar to my Chipmunk Pearl who had MBD. She also walked very wobbly and went cold. If this is MBD you must act quickly, give her calcium any way you can. Have you seen any twitches/seizures?
It won't harm giving her calcium even if it isn't a calcium deficiency but if it is a calcium deficiency you might see an improvement to her condition. Its just an idea i might be wrong.

I hope she will get through this

[lynn]

hi all
its been 36 hours since we took her out the avairy. she is eating and drinking, but also she also has diahrea now,still wobbly,but body temperture is warmer. do you think we should not feed her for 24 hrs because of the diahrea??
jennyb what type of food did you feed your chippy for extra calcium?
please can anyone help me.

[hollysmithy]

hi i now that rasberry leaves help with the runs

[jennyb]

Its good she is eating and drinking. What are you feeding her?

When Pearl had MBD we got the calcium from the vet, its called Nutrobal  and we just gave a pinch daily on her food. But its good to always give a cuttlefish bone like you get for birds, they usually nibble on it when they require some calcuim. I also grate some cuttlefish on their chipmunk food once a week to make sure they have enough. If you can get pure calcium carbinate powder then you can sprinkle that in the food or it can be mixed with water and made into a liquid you can syringe feed. You can mix it with honey, peanut butter, anything she may like to get her to take it.

Oh we had to change Pearl's diet too when she had MBD. Remove sunflower seeds and peanuts from the chipmunk food, these are not good if it is MBD, they will interfere with absorbing the calcium. So for now just feed her the rest of the chipmunk mix/hamster mix and give extra fruit/Veg which you can sprinkle the calcium on or inject it into it. Also yoghurt containing calcium and VIT D such as Petis Filous is great and some cheese. We also gave Pearl some oranges, these are good for absorbing calcium For Pearl it was a few weeks before we noticed improvement, it takes a very long time for the Chipmunk to recover, they have to rebuild all their bones again and replace all the calcium lost during having the MBD. Once the chipmunk is back to normal behaviour you can then reintroduce some nuts and sunflower seeds back in.

Is she an indoor Chipmunk?  if so she may need a Full Spectrum reptile light to give her VIT D she needs to help absorb calcium. I got one for Pearl and had it on from 8am till 8pm. They need replacing yearly.

[lynn]

unfortunately harriot died . myhubby even took hours off work to look after her throughout the day making sure she was getting water through a syringe  every hour. at one point we thought  she was going to make, when it looked like she perked up, but the next day she went down hill again and laid on her bed and passed away. i was real upset, cried all night .
our avairy has 3 sections. in 1 section there are 2x male aged 8. in the other section is 1x male and 1x female, just had a litter with those 2 and have 1x babymale left to be rehomed. in section 3 is where harriot lived with another male. he is now on his own and missing harriot. we will keep one of our female baby chipmunks and she canjoin him when she will be ready to leave mum in another 10 days time.

[pinkpill]

so sorry for ur loss! R.I.P harriot 

[DaveB]

Sorry to hear the news  but hope all goes well when you introduce the little one 

[hollysmithy]

awwwwww sorry for your loss r i p lil chippy x

[jennyb]

I am so sorry to read this Lynn, poor Harriot 

Did you try the calcium? Even if you did there was no guarantee it would work, we didn't know for sure it was MBD, just suspected 
With MBD despite everything you do they don't always make it. My Pearl was very lucky, other Chippies and also Squirrels have died before. Sadly Squirrels/Chipmunks are susceptible to MBD in captivity needing such high levels of calcium. On The Squirrel Board, it is very common, many people ask for help about MBD, sadly some don't make it but there have been successes.

In the future if you ever have a chippie, i hope this doesn't happen but if one shows signs similar to Harriot or any of the MBD symptoms start calcium straight away. The sooner you can start treatment the chance of it being a success.


Rest in peace Harriot