Selling diseased animals

[Lynn & The Chins]

I DO hope you will attend Nationals, not just for helping inform people, but to have a good time and enjoy the camaraderie and visit with all the wonderful chin folk, many of whom you may only see once a year at this show. It's in a good central location and the last time it was held in Oklahoma City it was a great time!!!

Hope to see you there...

 

[mercynursie]

Ditto Sapphire's response! Anything/anyone could have a disaster affect their lives at any time. I feel like it is almost an instinct in us to first look for fault/blame for things when we need to focus instead on fixing/finding the problem first.

 

[KissThis]

It is settled, I will be at the National show this year, though I won't be showing any animals. I will be happy to answer anyone's questions to the best of my ability.

I will be shopping as well.

 

[mercynursie]

Kudos KissThis!! You have a wealth of knowledge and experience to share about what you have experienced. I wish there was some way we could get your information video taped for anyone who has an interest to be able to see. I personally have great respect and admiration for all that you are doing.

 

[ticklechin]

I agree, a transcript would be great to share!

 

[KissThis]

I will be writing all of the information up for both ECBC and MCBA. Hopefully it will be posted on their websites. I'm not sure if it will be done before the national show or not. I would like to have as complete a story and information as possible before I write it up.

 

[Lynn & The Chins]

WOO HOO!!! Glad you're coming!!!

 

[mercynursie]

Great! I would definitely enjoy reading some more info. Thank you for all your hard work and concern to make the care of all chinchillas better.

 

[KissThis]

Update on my herd. I figured it was time to give you guys an update on how my herd is doing and share some good news. I treated my whole herd as I described in an earlier post with the gentamicin in early January. At that time I had a number of active abscesses and a few chins with goopy eyes. Most of those abscesses and goopy eyes resolved completely with the 4 days of gentamicin treatment, the rest needed a second round. The goopy eyes are by far the most stubborn to treat. I had 2 new abscesses show up in weanlings shortly after treating the whole herd, but I have not had any new abscesses in any of the adults treated. Right now I am happy to say that I have 2 that are still recovering from the stubborn goopy eyes and 2 recovering (rapidly shrinking abscesses) from the abscesses, everyone else is clear. I am not completely out of the woods yet, but to me this is great progress in the correct direction. In addition to the gentamicin I also sterilized all of my cages and removed the contaminated wood and replaced it with new in the cages with wood.

I have also heard from some people via the grapevine that there are other treatments that have been successful. I still need to get more info on these and I am currently working with a few different people to make sure that we understand the pros and cons of the various approaches. So far I am very happy with the results I have had with the gentamicin in my herd. Having other options for effective treatment are always good. Usually there are a number of antibiotics that can be used against a bacteria, so it is not surprising that there are multiple treatments available for this. I will keep you guys posted on how things continue.

 

[3CsMommy]

That's great news Kiss.

Have you seen any after-effects or side effects from the treatment? In humans gentamicin can sometimes cause weirdness with the ears, lack of appetite, and mood changes. Since chinchilla otic systems are similar to ours, I wondered if you'd noticed more barking from treated animals, or head shaking, or reacting to sounds that "aren't there". (One common side effect is ringing in the ears, called tinnitus, which I've had all my life, so I've always been interested in how chinnies hear.)

 

[KissThis]

3CsMommy, I have not noticed any after or side effects from the gentamicin. Since it is injected instead of given orally it should have little to no impact on the digestive tract. As far as hearing issues, those tend to show up at higher doses with prolonged exposure. I know that when they use gentamicin to induce hearing loss in chins so they can study it as a model for people they use 150 mg/kg over a few days paired with another drug, which is a much higher dosage than the 10 to 20 mg/kg that I am using. I will keep any eye out for side effects, but so far I have seen none.

 

[3CsMommy]

Excellent news.

 

[Spoof]

Curious to see how the treatments were going for the involved herds?

 

[Spoof]

Can hear the crickets chirp in here. Surely someone has an update of how the trial drugs went?

Have you been able to swab/test for it in chinchillas that carry it to determine either way?

I'd really like to know, I quit taking in rescues until there is a way to check for it and treat it.

 

[ticklechin]

I also would like to know how this turned out.