War Wounds and Healing

Well, as I mentioned on my last post two of my guinea-pigs are not very well at the minute but fortunately things are looking better for both of them and I hope it continues to look that way.

I have a picture of Whizz's wound as it is now, I don't have a picture of how it was at the beginning.

It was our belief at first that Dusty, Whizz's brother caused this wound so we split him from his brother and nephew. This then gave us the huge problem of where to put him! In the end we had to reintroduce Muffin and Mop who we had split shortly after introducing the rabbit due to agression from Mop. Fortunately they were soon very happy together and remain so to this day and hopefully they will always be together.

Dusty, now in with Thistle was very happy and for a few days everything seemed well with Whizz and Billy. Then, one weekday morning, we came outside to see Whizz crouched in the corner of his cage; one side covered in what we thought was urine. Later, when Mum was bathing him we realised that it was puss and that, underneath all his hair he had a nasty wound and a large absess. Mum raced him to the vet and when she returned he had his first set of antibiotics.

It was then that we realised that Billy was being agressive towards Whizz, it dawned on us that it might have been Billy all along who was causing the trouble in the boys' hutch. So we split Whizz and Billy, four cages for six animals!

Neither Whizz or Billy took the single life well. Billy would squeak loudly for Dusty or Whizz to reply but they never did but he was still eating. Whizz, however, went into depression. He crouched in the corner of his cage and wouldn't eat or drink, because of this we tried him back in the cage with Dusty and every was fine! They seemed to remember each other, it brought tears to my eyes to see their brotherly love.

Billy was still on his own and he continued to squeak desperately for the others. This lead us to make the very difficult decision of having him castrated. The operation went fine and at first everything seemed fine and his future looked bright. In six weeks he would be in with Mop and Muffin and no longer would he be on his own. Yet to our horror a few days after his operation he developed an infection. We took Whizz and Billy back to the vet straight away.

They were both given another set of medicines which we have to feed them by syringe, they hate them but they're working and we're praying that they will soon both be 100%. But it isn't all bad, Whizz really likes the banana flavoured medicine!




Here are their medicines.