Meet the Hamsters - it's cleaning out day

This week's YouTube video is live, and although I know you've already met my hamsters in this blog, here's a little video of them, taken while I was cleaning them out :)

Prepare for epic cuteness overload!

Love
Rebecca xx

Super Cute Animal Pictures

No this isn't "Clickbait", this genuinely is photos of my super cute animals...and hens :)

Today I'm posting the sorts of photos I share daily on Instagram (@pumpkinbecki). They don't necessarily fit my blog posts, so you wouldn't normally see them here, but I wanted to share them with you anyway

...Ooh and don't forget to follow me on my other platforms, direct links are on the "Contact Me and Social Media Platforms" page :)
Love
PB xx

Cute pictures of some of my pets

Pet Owners Have to Take the Bad with the Good

Always be Vigilant with your Pets Health

When you've got 13 pets in your life, there are bound to be health issues cropping up from time to time. For ages there'll be nothing, then suddenly everyone needs extra attention.

As we go into the month of May, here are some of the things going on chez Pumpkin Becki.

Chickens

Felicity has been dreadfully broody, so she hasn't been taking care of herself with regular dust baths, eating, drinking, having grit, so it's been up to us to make sure she's getting out of the coop to eat drink and poop, inspecting her (and the others) for lice, treating with a spot-on type ivermectin (prescribed by our vets) if necessary, plus dusting her manually with diatomaceous earth. This is good, because you pick up each bird and can also get a sense of it's weight and overall condition. It's also important to thoroughly clean the coop with a red mite treatment, as warmer weather and hot. broody hens can cause a population explosion before you know it!

Hetty is such a sweet girl

Hetty is a natural midwife, when someone goes inside the coop to lay, she sits with them until they're done. With Felicity broody, Hetty has also not been looking after herself, but we thought she was midwifing and hadn't realised how bad she was until she began holding her tail was down.

Picking her up you could feel she was lighter than before, she had a few lice too but not in significant numbers. she got a spot-on treatment and a dusting. Then she pooped...well it was more of a squirt than a poop! Bright green bits in a watery white splat. This was NOT NORMAL! The ivermectin should clear up external and internal parasites including most worms, but not all. We'd been dosing the layers pellets with Flubenvet, but with Felicity and Hetty not eating properly, they probably weren't getting their proper dosage. Felicity has now come out of her broody phase and is back to her old fabulous self, but Hetty is suffering. We are now hand feeding her a mixture of growers and layers pellets, plus Verm-X Poultry Zest, softened in apple cider vinegar and water, with a sprinkling of corn for added appeal. The cider vinegar is said to be beneficial to poultry, reducing bacterial infection, and acting as a wormer and digestion aid by reducing the pH level in the chicken's digestive system.

Hetty being handfed a tempting, mushy mixture

On day one Hetty was silent and disinterested, she had to be encouraged to keep lifting her head up as we carefully syringe fed her. When we put her back on the ground she was very unbalanced and though she now had fluids and food in her we were desperately concerned.

On day two she allowed us to syringe feed her a little, but as I re-mixed the mashy concoction, she started pecking it off the spoon! She took little but often and we were really pleased with how much she managed to consume. We fed her three times over the day and she began standing up for longer and making her sweet little cooing sound again.

On day three she seemed a little brighter still, she had three feeds of her special concoction again, was more active in the run, pecking for her evening corn with the others, but being very submissive to them, and her droppings were definite squirts still.

Day four (today), she only ate a little of her mush this morning, but was keen to drink when she was put back in the run, and she put up a bit more of a struggle to be caught - always a good sign. By lunchtime she was coming out of the run on her own to peck for some scratch treats and beginning to stand up for herself again. Hopefully we've turned the corner, but we still need her poops to improve.

Action Shot: Omm nom nom nom

Hamsters

Fingers crossed, all is quiet on the hamster front.

Pip the Roborovski Hamster has awesome whiskers

Guinea Pigs

Rosie developed a bald patch on her rump last week. I suspect it's lice related, as she is quite reluctant to be touched near it. Alternatively she may be suffering from barbering at the hands (or teeth) of Phoebe or Tilly.

Rosie's bald patch

Barbering is where a guinea pig's hair is pulled out/ chewed off by itself or a cage mate. It shouldn't be treated lightly, and you must establish whether the hair loss is self inflicted or not. If self inflicted it could be the sign of a skin infection or infestation, and that must be dealt with. As with the chickens, it's the right time of year for a population explosion of creepy crawlies, so you must be vigilant for signs such as excessive hair loss, clumps of hair falling out with skin attached, scurf and bald patches. You may even see the lice wiggling around near the skin. they look like tiny fawn-brown...insects (sorry, I gave up trying to find a better description!).

If Phoebe or Tilly are barbering Rosie, it may be because she has long hair that looks a little hay-like (sorry Rosie, I'm not suggesting your hair looks like straw, honest!). If that's the case I may have to cut it shorter, but the patch is very localised, my instinct says it's lice.

I'm treating Rosie in several ways; she, Tilly and Phoebe have all had a spot-on treatment of ivermectin, then about five days later Rosie had a Gorgeous Guineas CocoNeem Melt treatment and a lather, rinse, repeat in Gorgeous Guineas Lice 'n' Easy shampoo. She is due for a follow-up bath one week later.

Rosie also has ongoing earwax issues. I've never known anything like it! Cotton wool buds don't really remove it, it needs emulsifying with something first and then wiping off. The internet suggests a mineral oil, but I also emailed Chrissie at Gorgeous Guineas to see if she has anything in her range to suggest. She doesn't have anything specific, but recommended an off the shelf product Otodex drops, or repeat applications of her CocoNeem Melt over three days.

Rosie is bright in every other respect, eating and drinking well, so if I don't see any improvement, including hair regrowth after all that, she will be going to the vets.

The Moral of this story is:

Always be vigilant with your pets, their health and well-being is your responsibility and yours alone. Changes happen quickly, particularly with 'prey' animals, who tend to hide their symptoms until the very end. Quick action on your part can reduce the chances of long term problems or fatality.

If you've experienced any of this issues too, do let me know in the comments.
Love
Pumpkin Becki xx

Introducing my family - part 3

Hamsters

Cookie

Cookie the Syrian Hamster at six weeks old

Cookie is our first male pet. I don't know why I've always steered away from male animals, maybe it being 'humped' by a friend's black Labrador puppy as a teenager has mentally scarred me!

When Twinkle passed away, her empty cage made me so sad. She had been such an amazing little character and I missed her dreadfully.

We took a trip to Pets at Home on the way home from work (this is becoming a habit isn't it!), checked the Adoption section first, but there were no hamsters there. So we went round to the babies (via the guinea pigs, because...well it's me isn't it), and there was a cage of  four or five baby black eyed cream short coated Syrian hamsters. My first hamster, Biscuit, was a black eyed cream and looking at the babies took me right back to my teens.

I thought I had spotted the one I wanted, but when the assistant came and opened the cage, a much smaller little face popped up out of a pile of bedding. It was Cookie.

He settled in very quickly and loves climbing, so I bought him a Boredom Breaker Activity Assault Course from Viovet. I hide treats in different positions all over it, and it makes him use his nose to find them. he's ever so clever.

Cookie the Syrian hamster and his tea

He does this adorable thing where he pops his head up through a hole in the platform, and looks just like Basil the rat from Fawlty Towers when he's in the biscuit tin :D

We also call him our Zombie, because he has very long front paws, and sometimes his brain stops (not literally) and he sits very still on his back legs with his long front paws dangling in front of his chest. He looks like he's straight out of a zombie film!

His new favourite treat is meal worms. I have dried ones which I feed to him; he doesn't instantly pouch them, but sits there happily crunching on one until it's all gone.

He's much sleepier than any of the female hamsters I've had before,  that's quite a common trait, and although he has a good appetite he's remained very small. Male hamsters are generally smaller than females, but thinking back to how dinky he was when we first saw him, he was possibly the runt of the litter and is naturally smaller because of this.

Sophie

Sophie the Syrian hamster on
Boredom Breaker Assault Course

We needed some guinea pig food, so popped into Pets at Home on the way home from work (I definitely have a problem).

We picked up the nuggets and went to look at the Adoption section. We were just looking, we had no empty cages at home waiting for a new resident, so we felt quite happy and confident that we were just window shopping.

We looked at the rabbits, the gerbils, rats (no piggies this time - phew)...and there was Sophie (called Kiwi at the time) in one of the upper cages. She was a black banded Syrian hamster with the beginnings of a long coat on her hips. She was sitting at the front of the glass washing, and when I spoke to her and rubbed my fingertip on the glass she responded by pushing her forehead against the pane under my finger, just like cats do. 

Gulp!

She wombled off and I commented to MrPB that she had a little scab on her nose. I pointed at her and she wombled back over, rubbing her head against my finger through the glass again.

Double gulp!

I was lead quickly away to look at the baby rabbits and guinea pigs, but she was calling to me. We bumped into a colleague who joked that we didn't need any rabbits in our menagerie, and I said "No, but look at this little sweetheart" and lead her over to the hamster who repeated her head rubbing trick again. My colleague wandered off and MrPB came over.

The usual questions were asked by MrPB; where would we put her, what would we do about a cage etc etc, and before we knew it, Sophie was being boxed up by an assistant and we were taking her and a new Savic Ruffy 2 Rat cage plus a bowl and water bottle to the checkout. She was in the adoption section because of the scab on her nose, she had been removed from the rest of the litter to allow it to heal.

Sophie the Syrian hamster and her fluffy tummy

The moment she was boxed Sophie started scrabbling to get out and making a dreadful pipping noise. our mild mannered sweet little friend did not like being in a dark box! The assistant suggested we transferred her straight into the cage as soon as we got out to the car. We emptied a small bag of Back to Nature small animal paper bedding into the bottom of the cage, secured the top onto the base, put her box in and let her out. She immediately calmed down, stopped making her angry noises and started exploring. Once we started driving she climbed up the bars to watch where we were going (hamsters are short sighted and so this is impossible, but it looked adorable!).

MrPB added wooden platforms for Sophie, and as she was definitely a climber (but with terrible descending skills) I purchased another Activity Assault course for her and a ladder which we have secured with chains to make a bridge. As she grows she is getting better at climbing and slightly better at descending, but she is still a really sociable little girl and always comes over to 'talk' to you. The best bit is that when she climbs her bars, you can stroke her gorgeously soft, fluffy tummy. Oh my goodness, it's amazing!

"Pip" and "Diggy"

I've hankered after Roborovski Dwarf hamsters for  almost two years. When we got Minky our Russian Dwarf hamster, I bought the Dwarf Hamsters book by Pet Friendly. I had never heard of Roborovski hamsters (aka Robos) before I opened that book, but I then began researching them on Youtube and the internet at large.

After Minky passed away, we decided that we would try to get two Robos. Her old Savic plastic cage would be perfect for such small escape artists as there are no side bars for them to squeeze through, only an opening grille set into the clear plastic upper section.

Diggy the Roborovski hamster

At Pets at Home they had a cage with 3 baby Robos and a cage with one on it's own. All were gorgeous. We knew we wanted two, but it seemed sad to split up the three leaving one behind, so we said to the assistant that we may have all of them.

A friend had warned me that Robos are 'like water' to handle, and he was not wrong! The first baby took a minute or two, but went into the box on its own, the first box closed and popped into a secondary box for security, and put to one side while the next one was caught. The second box went in and the assistant started trying to scoop the another baby into the box. It went in, the assistant filled with confidence lifted the box and tipped it so the opening was pointing upwards and this little furball flew out of the top like it had been shot from a canon!! It fell a couple of feet onto the shop floor and between us we got it back into the cage. the assistant told us he would have to get that one checked over by a vet, so he caught the other baby for us and we had to leave it at two after all.

Pip the Roborovski hamster

The babies have been with us for just four days now, so they are still getting used to their new surroundings. They are much more sensitive to noise and light than the Syrian or Russian hamsters, and they are much more interested in burrowing! The Syrian and Russian Dwarfs tend to gather all their bedding up into a nest, leaving a flattened scattering as substrate. The Robos, like to dig, dig, dig! They burrow under the substrate, creating warrens of tunnels from one bit of cover to the next, and sending showers of paper flakes up into the air like a snowplow digging through a ten foot drift.

Pip the Roborovski hamster - demonstration of speed

We don't know what sex they are...yet, and we haven't really come up with names either. One has more brown on it's face than the other and for some reason I want to call it Pip. MrPB calls them both Diggy, so I'm trying to encourage that to be the paler faced one. They are absolutely minute as you can see by the egg box Diggy is sitting under in the first photo.

Next time...The chickens