[Gpdd] [HEALTH] pancake might have bugs again?

[Cazza177]

Hi

Sorry to hear Pancake is itching very badly.  This does sound very much like
skin mites.  Regretably my piggies get it too, and I take them to Vedra at
the Cambridge Cavy Trust to have them treated.  There are certain
medications that you can give at regular intervals to help prevent the mites
coming back.  There is one called Ivomectin, but you can only have this
given to your pig by the vets (you can't buy it over the counter), so please
ask them about it when you take Pancake to the vets.

There is an excellent shampoo that helps with these mites called VetSect
(www.millpledge.com).  However, this is for external use only and if your
Pancake has raw wounds on his feet, I would be caucious of using the kind of
medicated shampoo that is required to treat guinea pig mites.

If left untreated, the mites can cause a guinea pig to have fits.  Here's a
link below from Peter Gurney's website that I hope will help you:-

http://www.oginet.com/pgurney/skinp.htm

I also found this on another of his websites.  Here's what he says about
this subject:-

MITES
These are parasites that can be living either on or under the skin of guinea
pigs. The ones on the skin are usually referred to as running lice. The
symptoms are small bald patches, particularly around the shoulders and front
legs and hair shafts broke. Sometimes there are raised dots, like human
goose pimples on the skin. The running lice seem to cause less hair loss and
though they are quite small can been easily seen moving about by parting the
hair with the tips of the finger. Rest assured, they are species specific so
humans cannot pick them up. I also believe that they are photosensitive for
I have never seen them on a white or very light cream guinea pig, and in
tri-coloured piggies they seem to stick to the dark hair.
This is the easiest of skin conditions to deal with for there are many
products on the market that will kill these parasites without harming the
animal. The best by far is the prescription only medicine, IVOMECTIN. If
after two, maybe three injections of IVOMECTIN over the course of a week to
ten days, the animal is still scratching and the skin still looks raw, then
forget looking for parasites for the problem is probably a fungal one.
There are some very effective anti-parasitic shampoos formulated for human
beings, and despite the cries of despair that these can be harmful to guinea
pigs by members of the veterinary profession, they are not. They may be
harmful to the bank balances of veterinary surgeons, for they will want to
sell you the more expensive medicines that they stock.

Hope it all helps.

Carole