Pygmy hedgehog - advice/drugs doses...?

Re: Pygmy hedgehog - advice/drugs doses...?

Mark Naguib — Wed, 24 Sep 2014 20:30:17 GMT

Mark - that's very cool! I've only ever briefly seen one in the wild while driving along at night in Cyprus, where I found it enthusiastically munching on a road-kill snake!

Rebecca - Extraction of affected teeth and drainage of abscesses will do much of the work. While clindamycin is better vs anaerobes and if you have much bone involvement, amoxy/clav is still a good choice. I've personally used Synulox Palatable Drops as it is well received by hedgehogs and you get good client compliance. You can get liquid clindamycin for oral administration but I haven't personally used it in hedgehogs.

Good luck!

Mark

Re: Pygmy hedgehog - advice/drugs doses...?

Sammy82 — Tue, 23 Sep 2014 10:54:56 GMT

As I doubt there is any medicine licenced for hedgehogs at all everything you prescribe will be under the cascade. Technically you should use a veterinary preparation though, e.g. Antirobe rather than the human generic.

Re: Pygmy hedgehog - advice/drugs doses...?

Rebecca MacMillan — Tue, 23 Sep 2014 09:58:13 GMT

Thanks Mark Naguib!

I've actually booked the hedgehog in for Thursday for GA and explore mouth, so your advice was certainly not too late - thank you!

On exam in consult, she has a little bit of facial asymmetry, left side of face slightly puffier than right. Was just about able to glimpse into her mouth as she was squirming around, a little bit of increased soft tissue in that side of her mouth, looked normal pink colour. She can still eat ok, but only soft food and meal worms. The owner has previously been given baytril for her, and he reports this issue has been a bit on and off over the past 6 months. So we've decided that we will GA and take a look before deciding on any further tx. She seems quite bright for an older hedgehog and weighs 450g.

Would clindamycin also be your antibiotic of choice for this case Mark (if it was an oral abscess or tooth root infection)? Does that work ok with the cascade (I guess baytril is not good for anerobes, which is why I would need to use a different antibiotic)?

Re: Pygmy hedgehog - advice/drugs doses...?

Mark Hedberg — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 21:32:15 GMT

[quote user="Mark Naguib"]

Egyptian long eared hedgehogs (Hemiechinus auritus) are the worst in this respect and can get very loud when they're grumpy!

Mark

[/quote]

That they can. Although the one that adopted my cat food dishes in Saudi was a fairly pleasant fellow. (Unless he was arguing with the cats about who got to eat first!)

Re: Pygmy hedgehog - advice/drugs doses...?

Mark Naguib — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 21:13:02 GMT

Hi Rebecca,

This may a bit late now as you've probably seen your hedgehog and I'm largely repeating what others have already said! Prolonged starvation isn't necessary - I normally go for a couple of hours. Chamber induction works best. If you're doing dental work or a long procedure then I'd intubate. It's much more fiddly than a cat or dog but can be done with decent lighting and a small tube - 2mm for adult hogs.

Periodontal disease is very common, as are abscesses but beware they are very prone to a wide variety of neoplastic disease including oral squamous cell carcinomas, which are particularly common (and owners mistake for abscesses!). Make sure you properly probe all the teeth and take skull radiographs if possible.

I'd recommend the fourth edition of the Exotic Animal Formulary by Carpenter - it has a good hedgehog chapter and is quite up to date. I'm not aware of any known pharmacological differences between European hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) and African pygmy hedgehogs (Atelerix albiventris) but as with many exotic drug doses, they're not likely to be based on proper trials! The only one you might come across is that ivermectin is supposedly fatal to APHs. This is entirely nonsense but commonly mentioned on internet fora! Finally, on the subject of other clinical things to note, when annoyed or frightened they can make quite dramatic huffing noises which can be mistaken for upper respiratory disease - it's much more noticeable than in European hedgehogs. Egyptian long eared hedgehogs (Hemiechinus auritus) are the worst in this respect and can get very loud when they're grumpy!

Mark

Re: Pygmy hedgehog - advice/drugs doses...?

Rebecca MacMillan — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 15:33:11 GMT

Yes, I vaguely remember something like that too!

(I think I was trying to do too many things at once earlier, pricing up my cat dental at the same time as panic posting on here!)

Re: Pygmy hedgehog - advice/drugs doses...?

Rebecca MacMillan — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 15:31:51 GMT

Looks good - thanks Mark! So I'm ok in just thinking that a pygmy hedgehog is just a smaller version of a regular hedgehog then? No other particular differences clinically that I need to know? (sorry if that sounds silly, you know what I mean!).

Re: Pygmy hedgehog - advice/drugs doses...?

Sammy82 — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 15:28:40 GMT

[quote user="Rebecca Benge"]

Ha ha! Sorry, my mind was elsewhere! Definitely iso! (...though if any exotic people have any paddling propofol induction techniques it'll be interesting to hear them, he he ;) )

[/quote]

Aparently you can anaesetise frogs by applying propofol onto the skin (think I saw that in the bsava exotics manual)

Re: Pygmy hedgehog - advice/drugs doses...?

Mark Hedberg — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 15:19:23 GMT

http://www.hedgehog-rescue.org.uk/documents/drugs_2010.pdf

MEDICATIONS & DOSAGES FOR HEDGEHOGS

formulated by Caroline Gould & Tim Partridge B.V.Sc., M.R.C.V.S.

& used by Vale Wildlife Hospital & Rehabilitation Centre.

Good luck!

Re: Pygmy hedgehog - advice/drugs doses...?

Rebecca MacMillan — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 15:14:01 GMT

So you would go for clindamycin over synulox in these guys?

I have literally just tried ringing a local exotic referral service, and they don't see many of these guys so were a bit unhelpful unfortunately! They suggested synulox at a cat dose for bodyweight and metacam at a generic 0.1-0.2mg/kg, but they did say they'd dig out an exotic formularly and see if there was anything more specific in there and email it for me...

Doesn't fill me with much confidence when the exotic referral centre don't know! :(

Re: Pygmy hedgehog - advice/drugs doses...?

Violaine Colon — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 15:08:29 GMT

Hi,

I normally induced with iso in induction chamber then on the mask or intubated (ET: 2.0mm).

Dental disease are common, especially if fed wet diet. I would recommend x-ray of the skulls to check for any bone involvement. It might need extractions.

I normally use clindamycin for dental abscess (10mg/kg BID). As the antirobe capsule are also too high mg, I normally dilute them in water for injection (not sure if pharmacologically correct).

Hope that helps

Re: Pygmy hedgehog - advice/drugs doses...?

Rebecca MacMillan — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 14:28:50 GMT

Ha ha! Sorry, my mind was elsewhere! Definitely iso! (...though if any exotic people have any paddling propofol induction techniques it'll be interesting to hear them, he he ;) )

Re: Pygmy hedgehog - advice/drugs doses...?

Michael Woodhouse — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 14:21:13 GMT

[quote user="Rebecca Benge"]Wild hedgehogs I've just induced with propofol in a chamber,[/quote]

Really hope you mean iso.....

(unless they paddle around in in until they go sleepy............ )