Lost little Tato

Chinchilla & Hedgehog Pet Forum

Help Support Chinchilla & Hedgehog Pet Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

VolunteerChin22

I <3 dustbunnies
Joined
Feb 1, 2009
Messages
1,992
Location
Nashville, TN
I came in to check on a pregnant female this morning and found one of my kits, Tato X10, dead on his shelf. He was born on 9/16/09 and was doing fine in a cage with some other boys who are weaned, eating and drinking. Someone in the cage has soft poo so I have been giving them acidopholous on their food for about 3 days now and extra hay. The only thing I noticed about his body is he seemed to have a little bit of a tan/greyish liquid around his mouth, other than that he was just stretched out with his eyes closed :(:cry3:

Any thoughts on what might have happened? Im off to scrub everything...
 
He may have gotten something stuck in his throat. +- 6 years ago I lost a very young chin from that. I had a necropsy done and the vet said there was nothing I could have done for her even if I was there and tried to save her. But there are so many things that could have caused his death.
There is no way to tell for sure without a necropsy and even then sometimes nothing definitive is found.
 
It does sound like he could definitely have choked. I'm so sorry. It doesn't sound like something contagious because generally you would get some symptoms that you would see before the chin passed.

I'm so sorry to hear about this! It isn't fair to lose a young chin after so much work and effort and love. But, please don't feel bad or like you did anything wrong. Things happen, they just happen for no reason. Young chins are so susceptible to everything and they will find a way to get hurt if at all possible. I've seen young males bolt their food like crazy, it's always the young males!

Like Cathy said, you don't know for sure what happened without a necropsy. I've had chins choke before and only once was there anything I could do to help...ONE time in all these years and that was because it was just a partial choke that I was right there for and I got him to a vet, who was a chin lover. She passed a tube through the esophagus down to the stomach and saved the little guy.
 
Yeah thats what I was thinking that maybe he aspirated. Either that or some sort of internal problem but both of which would have been impossible to prevent. Poor little guy - I just hope he didn't suffer too long. I cleaned the cage still, don't want to take any chances - The other boys in the cage all have homes lined up, just waiting to be shown.
 
If he had fluid coming out of his mouth, that definitely can be a sign that it was choke. There will often be lots of saliva mixed with whatever the chin has been eating. Poor little guy. :(

It always makes you feel better to go ahead and have everything nice and scrubbed!
 
Back
Top