My Hamster Are Breathing Heavily, How Can I Help Her To Feel More Comfortable Other Than The Medicines?
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 at
10:32 am
My hamster are breathing heavily. I bought her to see a Vet and was given Meloxicam fow swelling and Mucosal Elixir for improving of breath. She have the medicine for 3 to 4 days. However, it doesn’t seem to helped. She is 1yrs 8mths, a Syrian. She is getting thinner. How can I help her to feel more comfortable other than the medicines? Please help!
Tagged with: Breathing • Comfortable • Feel • Hamster • Heavily • Help • Medicines • More • Other • Than
Filed under: Hamster Books
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It sounds like you should take her back to the vet again. Breathing problems in hamsters can be due to an infection called pasteurella, or many other infections of the lungs – you must treat these with appropriate medication otherwise the hamster will die. If she is losing weight that is a sure sign that she is sick – so she needs the medication. Ask the vet to give you “recovery formula” or similar as well – this is a soft food supplement that will help her gain some weight back, and also help prevent the medicines giving her an upset stomach.
However, there are some things you can do to make her more comfortable generally, but this is ALONGSIDE seeing the vet and giving her medicine.
1) change her bedding to a paper-based bedding such as carefresh, just in case she is sensitive/allergic to wood-based bedding. I have had hamsters who were allergic to pine shavings. Also never, ever, give her scented bedding of any kind.
2) if she has a sand bath remove it for the time being in case it is irritating her lungs
3) make sure she is eating a good quality food mix (if you can persuade her to eat). Supplement it with a tiny bit of cooked meat such as chicken or turkey or liver or hard-boiled egg. A sick hamster will also appreciate things like porridge (cool to room temp and give her just a small teaspoon-full), baby food, etc, in small quantities.
you should hold her and tell her calm and when she gets calm u give her a treat or play with her so she knows what she did was good not bad!