Good evening everybody and welcome to tonight's webinar proudly brought to you by the webinar vet and our gracious sponsors, Burgess. My name is Bruce Stevenson and I have the honour and pleasure of chairing tonight's session. A little bit of housekeeping for you.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them. Hover your mouse over the screen. You'll see a Q&A box.

Just click on that, type it in there. It'll all come through to me and then John has kindly agreed to answer those questions, at the end of the session. So John Chitti is an RCVS advanced practitioner in zoological medicine.

He qualified from the Royal College in 1990 and gained RCVS certificate in zoological medicine in 2000. He is a co-director of a small animal and exotic practise in Andover, Hampshire, with a 100% avian, exotic and smaller mammal case load. They are a mixture of referral and first opinion.

He consults to 7 zoological collections, a commercial laboratory, and the great bustard reintroduction project. He is co-editor of 3 texts on avian medicine, 1 on rabbit surgery, and co-author of a textbook on tortoise medicine. Author of various book chapters and papers on a range of species.

John was the president of the European Association of Avian Veterinarians for 2015 to 2017. And on the editorial board of the Journal of Exotic Pet Medicine. And he was also the president of the British Small Animal Veterinary Association, 2017 to 2018.

So we have an excellent speaker to talk to you about small mammals tonight. But before we get to our speaker, I'd just like to once again thank Burgess for their kind sponsorship tonight and to welcome Peter Lancaster to say a few words. Peter, over to you.

Thank you, Bruce. It was just over a week ago that John Anthony and myself had a discussion and we decided to change the subject of tonight's webinar, which was originally going to be on respiratory disease and rabbits and guinea pigs, and we, we didn't think that that was quite right. I'd just like to thank both of them for reacting quickly and especially John for putting together what I'm sure will be another great webinar.

I know he's working very hard over the weekend to put this together. I know that many people are using the current circumstances as an opportunity to catch up on their CPD, and I think that Anthony, and the webinar vet, have, have provided a great way for us to, for us to do this. Normally during the webinars I would do a, here's a message from our sponsor, kind of slot at the end, and talk about how great Burgess is as a business, but I don't want to do that tonight.

However, there are a couple of messages that I would like to share. Firstly, if you do manage to communicate with your clients, can you please tell them that there is no need for them to bulk buy pet food. There's plenty of supplies throughout the industry and their animals are not going to eat anymore.

Secondly, is that as a business that can trace its history back over 200 years, and has seen many crises, is that we will come out of this, and we will get back to normal, or perhaps, a new normal with a much greater understanding of what is actually important to our society. The role of pets in supporting mental health and wellbeing is widely recognised, and in the current circumstances, I'm sure that this role is much more important than, than ever in helping people and their families overcome the impact of social isolation and bringing some light into, into people's lives. Finally, I'd just like to thank those of you who are continuing to care for our animals in really difficult circumstances, for example, carrying out consultations over the phone or across a car park, and having to receive patients on the doorstep.

And also providing much needed reassurance to, to anxious owners, especially those waiting for vaccinations and other route routine, but essential treatment. All I can ask is that you please follow the guidelines from the Royal College or from your own professional bodies if you're in different countries, and make sure that you look after your own health and the health of your colleagues. Thank you for supporting tonight's webinar.

Please stay safe. It's good night from me and over to John. Thank you.

Welcome to tonight's webinar. It is as, as Peter said, different to advertised, and, we thought we'd do something slightly different. And I'm really grateful, to the sponsor.

We always say thank, sponsor to the end, but let's thank the beginning. It's great that you helped put all these webinars on because that sponsorship, very little CPD would happen, worldwide. It's also great that patient to actually try something experimental tonight.

It's a good excuse to do it. And thanks to you guys too for putting in lots of questions already. And it's really quite hard choosing what to answer really because some of these questions are, some are very short, some are really long.

Some you'll see how China was trying to redirect the question and to where to look to find the answer because it's too wide to answer in the webinar. Some bits I'm actually trying to discuss the question because the question is the exciting bit. I actually, one or two bits I generally didn't know.

And so I've spent the weekend my textbooks, and that's great, expands my mind. And the reason I want to try this was because I actually think this is something where CPD should go, is that, The people receiving the CPD should, should be driving it. What do you want to know?

What do you want to hear? And, very often it's just say you, you, you give a talk and you. Say what you think people need to know, but that is what you're going to talk about.

So it's not always the right thing. And I know I've bombed out on that a few times. So, you know, but let's see what this does, and if you like, it's great.

Feedback can be really important on this one, please. If you don't, that's great. It's all part of a learning, learning curve and we'll see what happens with that.

And one thing of this type of talk is gonna be a bit bitty. But it's also, I don't know how long it's going to be. Normally I've got quite a good idea.

This I'm not too sure. It shouldn't overrun, but I'm hoping to leave it a little bit short, so there's more time for more questions tonight, and then you guys can really make me sweater on it tonight. So fingers crossed, let's see what happens.

See you at the end, as they say. So first question was about, getting, where to get biological data from, for the, these different species and about what's normal for them. And that, that's really difficult.

A lot of things out there, that, that's so the classic one is actually the BSA being man of exotic pets, as you heard in the intro, I do, do have a bit of a cap to wear for that one. But, it's a really, really good basic book. If you've got one book on exotics in your practise, it probably should be it.

It covers all the basic bits, lots and lots of, stuff on diseases, on drugs, techniques and stuff. And it's, it's, it's getting older now, but it's still really, really good book to have. I'd recommend this one as your, if you, if you only have one text, this is it.

The other two to have, on your shelves, would be if you're doing a little bit more, probably, the, two formularies, the BSABA formulary and also Carpenters. Carpenter's got some biological data in there as well. And those, those are good, good basic books to go to.

But actually, for a lot of weirder species, we should be looking at the wild, what's happening there, and these, these are the classic walkers and the hamburger mammals of the world, because then you actually find out what the actual natural animal does, what it eats, what it, what its biological data should be, what, you know, what a real rabbit looks like type of thing. I'm not sure many people got elephants, but hey, who knows where things go. .

But actually the big question with this is, what does that mean? So I took a few figures out of, the first couple come from a man of exotic. So African pygmy hedgehogs rectal temperature should be 36.1 to 37.2 °C.

Well, you're not going to measure the temperature of an African pygmy hedgehog without an anaesthetic. Except in really rare circumstances. That's going to put his own skew onto what the temperature is because temperature lowers it, you know, it's easier very often that you're really good at keeping up there.

So how relevant is that in part of your clinical examination? Similarly, normal heart rate of a mouse is 420 to 700 beats a minute. That's firstly quite a wide range, and secondly, That's pretty hard to count.

And I'm sure the stethoscope, it's not really going to pick that one up. So just show the importance of the anaesthetizing, you want to measure heart rate, if you do need to use a digital, monitoring device. It's gonna pick up that sort of rate and stuff.

You must be pretty sens. Some small to do it. And that's where you get those nuances too, but they're pretty wide variation too.

And of course, the thing to bear in mind too, if you are listening to a mouse's heart, you can bet your bottom dollar that that that animal is going to be pretty stressed and its heart rate is probably pretty high. So actually do these things really help? And the answer is often not much.

However, a lot of data can be used for things like weaning ages, sexual maturity ages, gestational length. Those things are good. And those generally you're gonna need to use a combination of the, the captive, animal manuals, but also the, the wild mammal things because they, they, a lot of these are pretty well studied out in the wild.

One other thing too to bear in mind is also this day and age, and of course, the moment telemedicine really is right up there. There are devices, for, remote monitoring. And those can be used by owners in some ways a resting animal, that, that's quite, an animal in its own circumstances can be much more relevant than in the consulting room.

The big deal with these is there's a lot of difference in quality of the machines you need to know really what you're recommending, whether any good, and also any machine that is used wrong is going to give you really weird advice. A good example that'd be like respiratory rate in a rabbit and actually teach you how to measure respiratory rate and not looking at the nose twitches in the rabbit, which is a totally different thing altogether and doesn't reflect respiratory rate. That's often get.

So just be careful about that one. I mentioned about drug doses again being biological data, which fundamentally they are, because they rely on metabolism and that kind of stuff. Bear in mind for these more exotic creatures is, you know, it's very little known really.

So use those reference sources wherever possible. And that will involve keeping up to date with literature because formulas are great, the most important source you can use, but they always lag the literature. So that you'll be at least 6 months out of date, possibly longer with some things.

And if you want things like pharmacokinetic dose and stuff like that, you need to be doing, you know, you're looking on, you know, you're doing a Google Scholar, your, your, VIN searches, that kind of stuff to, to keep up with those. And above all, one thing you can control because if getting those exact doses for each species and stuff is we get weight, do weigh these animals and get accurate weights because that's one bit you can control and getting it right rather than taking a guess. When you've got something that weighs just, you know, just 10s of grammes.

A minor error in guessing is going to make a big difference in dose rate. Bear in mind too, you're gonna need things like informed consent to a little bit more about some of these drugs later on, one of the other questions that came up. And that is treating informed you to talk about these things and discuss whether licence or not.

And also bear in mind things like compliance. It's not always easy dosing, saying it's foul tasting to, to a small creature who doesn't want to take it. And we've tried giving Kabago to rats will understand that.

And above all, review these things, review the effects, review what we're getting, and keep checking. And that's one reason why I very rarely put in drug doses in talks, because they're constantly changing or evolving a lot and actually remembering the dose right is a dangerous thing to do. Looking out fresh each time is much more relevant.

This question came in was, can rabbits and guinea pigs live together? And again, reviewing the question is, actually, should we, can they or should they? The answer should they live together, is that an emphatic no.

They do have, diseases, different sensitivity to the border of tele when we rethink about, and that's really quite dangerous to guinea pigs and less dangerous to rabbits. And of course the big one is aggression, where we often get male rabbits attacking guinea pigs, occasionally the other way around too, and that can be difficult. But then again, we also know lots of people who've done it.

It's been all right. So obviously can live to get the right circumstances. And of course, you very rarely get asked before the owner's gone and done it.

And then it's kind of, well, do you split the rabbit and guinea pig and do you have a lone rabbit and a lone guinea pig, or do you just help them do it? Well, you kind of generally do the latter, and because the individual animals can be even more stressed probably. So the big thing is to make sure guinea pigs got plenty of place to get away.

I mean, at least by that stage, you're probably pass the thing about infectious disease. But lots of places the guinea pig to get away, things like drainpipe are fantastic. Make sure that you tend to use guinea pig mixes.

You got vitamin C added because you're doing the rabbit no harm, but the guinea pig needs more. Sometimes the extent of feeding the guinea pig in a separate area where rabbit can't get to it and make sure you can manage it so it's always escape zones. Reducing that competition for bedding, which competition for feeding places, competition of drinkers.

It's always add more in there, and hopefully reduce some of those stress effects. But above all, ideally, if you get half a chance to stop this happening, please do, because they are different species. They're not even closely related.

So, so just be a little bit careful about that. Another question came about how to manage chronic block tear ducts in rabbits. .

Again, this is the more complex area than just the question suggests. Generally refer to this often with dry cystitis, so inflammation of the tear ducts. More usually it seems to come off a blockage.

And why is it blocked? Well, generally relating to dental disease, sinusitis, which can often relates to dental disease and sometimes just direct physical obstructions. So actually it's not a diagnosis in itself.

It's a clinical sign. It's a reflection of something that's basically happening between the, between the opening of a tear duct in the eye and the opening of a tear duct, in the nose. Something's happening in between there.

And generally that involves either the first couple of molar routes or the incisor route. Generally are treated by help managed by flushing. Lots of people do this.

What does it actually do? Well, it temporarily improves the drainage. It doesn't actually treat disease.

If you've got true blockage that you got a foreign body down there, yes, it might do, but those are pretty rare. But it does improve drainage. It doesn't address any of the underlying causes, so in itself, it's not sufficient.

It does provide symptomatic relief though, and that's a good thing because our job as vets is to help the welfare of patients, make them feel better, and that's actually OK, as long as we don't leave it there and we just use it as part of the management. So we must investigate the underlying causes. And the first thing I'd do if you're best value testing is going to be imaging, I put pictures CTM.

I've done this before, you know, it's what what I got for Christmas one year. It just adds a whole new nuance to, to, to, put it in contrast, studies. If nothing else I can do both ducks at the same time, which you can't really with X-rays plainer X-rays.

But radiography is a great way of studying it and Plain radiographs will tell you an awful lot about the sinuses, a lot about the tooth roots, and, you know, what could be going on between them. And in contrast and that will show you where it's blocked, it'll, it'll give again further clues to what's going going along there. So they're really, really useful things to do.

And that's my 1st, 1st thing I'll turn to. Now, another good thing is you got to anaesthetize to get properly positioned radiographs. And a full dental examination is a damn good idea to do at the same time while it's asleep, and you're gonna get most of the clues and most of your diagnosis that way.

So what do you do to treat it? Well, there's obviously things that localised therapy, so dental management, if you've got sinusitis, you can, flush your sinuses with with hyperic needles and materials there, and you can open up the sinuses surgically and clear them out. They really are impacted.

We can use systemic therapies, sometimes antibiosis, although actually, to be honest, we don't often use systemic antibiotic in these because the nature of rabbit pus is very much that it doesn't allow the antibiotics to enter very well. You don't get great effect. Besides of peripheral inflammation, it can be useful.

Non-steroidals, definitely a mainstay of this trying to get that reaction down. The ducks often compressed by, by the reaction going around it and just try and reduce the inflammation there. And again, it's part of making the animal feel better and that's a pretty good, good move.

I mean, of course, also don't think you're all clear therapy. Rabbit discharges are pretty caustic things. And the cornea, you often get, ulceration or even keratiti forming, because of the activity on that flushing will help remove that.

But also you want to use some some agents just to, just to lubricate the, the surface of the eye just to, to protect it and soothe it. And sometimes that anti-inflammatory drops in the eye are also quite useful as well. So we talk about a non-steroidals.

The other thing I left out here actually, I should have put in there was more localised therapy is that a lot of these rabbits will have like a scalding of the skin around the eye. I think it's built up clogged discharges over the fur and things. And for some of them, just clipping that fur away, cleaning the skin and carrying on with just, just, just, just, just disinfecting the skin and keeping it and soothing it.

Will actually help a lot and reduce a lot of irritation around the eye. And again, just making a patient feel better. And a lot of clinical signs will go once you've clipped that that far away.

And that's again another thing else to do while anaesthetizing animal, investigating. You can just do these very basic things to keep life and soul together. So you're flashing, you find that tear ductus to nose in the very chronic cases really hard to get anything in there.

To get around it, I mean, very tiny tubes are available. I really like metal, lacrymal cannulae rather than the plastic ones. I don't find the kink so much and I also find that it just a little bit more time to them, so they're too easy to get, get through.

Obviously, I'm only putting force into them because you are going to go through the side of a duct more easily. But I found it really are good. Easiest place to find is actually on eBay over here.

I, I certainly we're going to states about the conferences there, but otherwise, they are easily available on eBay and they are really, really good, and they help you, access some ducts, which I don't think you can do a plastic. So if you could, but if you can't get those you get really slows and ducts. Sometimes just put using a systemic anti-inflammatory for a couple of weeks, waiting, topical anti-inflammatory as well, and then retrying, and those, those, those will be much easier to access.

And you've got to be patient. Some of these conditions are really chronic and they're not going to get better in a day or two. If they're totally blocked, that can be really tricky.

Again, your anti-inflammatories and a bit of patience and just try and get through that. In the past, I've tried things like putting like pancreatic enzyme down and trying to flush through that, probably that, don't do that very often now. Generally, I've found that patients anti-inflammatories will do the job in the end, especially if I can in that meantime find the underlying cause and do more to correct that, and that will probably help in the longer run.

So sorry, these are gonna be almost whistle throats. Some of these topics I asked about could have been whole lectures themselves. So, if we're having our better listening and you want to hear more about it, please, please ask.

I'm really happy to do that. The next question about how to manage degus, which are quite popular now, and I've kept. I think they're actually rather wonderful.

They're one of my absolute favourite, small mammal pads. They're quite robust and quite large, and they also live a bit longer than a lot of the small mammals. They're probably less handable than a lot, but that's, that may be actually sometimes with these small pets, we, we probably handle too much.

And having an animal, you just watch and enjoy watching it being itself is actually half the more, more than half the pleasure. They're also really vocal, and they sing, and males sing at night, this beautiful sound, and I used to used to have some males, a little colony, and they used to use a magical sound of evening. Overall, they are trimorph rodents.

They're related to chinchillas, South American rodents again. And, in fact, if you manage them like small chinchillas, you won't go too far wrong. Basic setups, the bottom right here is actually from a zoo and we probably reflects the type of, environments to be found in South America.

Typically, people, keep them as pets and have more, more like a typical, small mammal set up in their homes. Some of them are wheels, but with platforms, they do climb, they do jump, so make sure you got a good, good, good height to it. They can move around.

That's really helpful. In terms of handling, they are strong. They have minimal scruff, and they do bite, and some of the worst small mammal bites I've had have been from Dagues though they do bite.

Be careful tail. They, if you hold on tail, they will slip. Here is, one I did, and just to lose, lose the tail but there, you can remove that or actually just let it dry up and it'll it'll necros and fall off there, you know that little stump tail day you like that.

So no lasting damage is part of a defence mechanisms, but it's a good thing not to do because obviously, the owner doesn't like it too much. In order to stay you, to be honest, . Anaesthesia surgeon's brief mention to standard isofluorine, chamber induction, and masking is really good.

They're difficult to tube. One thing I will mention is about castration. They have really, really open ingle canals and very muscular, tunics.

There's a lot you read about, doing this, we have to castrate them via a midline approach and do that abdominally. A lot of those using anaesthetic regimes have very little muscle relaxation about them. So of course, might induce they pull the testes right back in.

If you got muscle relaxation, they'll go back into the scrotta and you can use a normal scrotal or pre-scrotal approach for that, and that's absolutely fine. The important thing is you do close that canal quite firmly as high up as you can because they can herniate, given half a chance too. Spades are unusual to do, generally concentrate on castrate the males.

It is much easier to do. And otherwise, for, in terms of, anaesthesia, general small mammal precautions of keeping them warm, keeping fluid levels up, they will get gut safe see in a moment. And, pain relief has to be high as well.

They get a lot of dental disease, they can have these continuously growing roots and stuff, and they have a use of very arid coarse, fibrous diet. So if you don't do something about that, they will, produce a spectacular overgrowth. They will have roots going all over places in here.

What they will do is get this interaction between the incisor and the first, pre-molar roots, and you get and it's like odontoma formation within the nasal cavity. So we pseudo tumour type things. And these are really difficult to control by the time they reach a stage, which often when you see them.

Overgrowing in size will happen partly due to trauma, bar biting occasionally, sometimes just flying around and just damaging themselves. You get those, but very often if you see this, really start thinking about underlying disease, what's happening to the, molars, and you start getting excessive growth and forcing the jaws apart, these incisors don't meet properly, you start seeing that. So very often these are a reflection of the molars and don't just clip them or cut them and recommend for diamond sort of drill cutting rather than clipping.

Look at those motives and treat that disease too. And bear in mind, whatever side you're showing, this is going to be painful. If you have roots coming through the bottom of your jaw, it is going to hurt.

Analgesia is king, and they can give them all the fibrous diet you like. If the jaws hurt, they're not going to chew it. So if you want to go on a more fibrous diet, make sure they don't hurt.

And now this clinical sign of dent disease, these guys, they do for you at that stage. I think so it's something of fibre, I think they just can't groom very well. The big ball patches against, don't look so we don't see signs of mites, we see barbering signs or anything like that, start looking with teeth and start trying to, find that underlying cause.

In terms of management, Again, remove those hooks just like you would anything else there, you get these big hooks form in the mouth there. You can remove those you can clip them, you can drill them as you normally would. Pain control again, just don't forget that pain control.

In terms of prognosis, like chinchillas, by the time you see signs, it's pretty well advanced. This is an endoscopic view of a tooth root. This is inside the nasal cavity, which is not inside the mouth.

So these two roots will come up into the nasal cavities where you get adontoma formation. If you can see some discharge reaction around here. You know, this is pretty serious stuff here.

At this point, you really have got to be questioning the welfare and your ability to control the pain in that. They also prone to cataracts. This is typically it's linked to maybe to diabetes.

I think it's probably a bit simplistic that because it doesn't not true diabetes. It seems to be more of a chronic hyperglycemia and probably more reflects, sort of a high, high in cereal super carbohydrates, and really they want just fibre, fibre, fibre. They are absolutely used to a rubbishy diet, and most things we give are probably too high in everything.

And this chronic hyperglycemia leads into his cataracts at quite an early age. They can manage the, husbandry so it doesn't matter too much to the individual, but again, best to prevent, best to, you know, keep that diet good in fibre to begin with. They will get, furring, they'll get these, these, these, these trap penises, and their extensions too.

Again, even though it be often difficult to see, it's often a single strand of hair around the base, you do need to anaesthetize, clean up, remove that before you can replace. Other problems I get, we do see a lot of respiratory disease, see a lot more heart disease now. I think that's the case really in all small mammals.

I think we're getting better at picking up heart disease, doing more investigations where what used to be a postmortem diagnosis when I started, now it's very much a very common day to day diagnosis pre-mortem, and they do get a lot of tumours as well. These are often malignant. So again, if you, if you're gonna investigate these, do hopefully take a sample first of all, if you can biopsy.

If not, do take wide margins and they'll be invented with flaps and things. They actually quite robust creature anaesthesia, so that's quite helpful. Next question I had was, regarding antibiotic choice and small mammal, which again is a remarkably well, it's not a very simple question or a very, very complex one.

And the big deal is, is there really a choice in this? You know, we have good batra, which is, which is licenced, and there we go. We have simple, simple thing to do.

We now also have sulphur trim as well, so we actually have a bit of choice for that too, so it's good. But do we actually have to use licenced drugs? Where does this cascade come into these guys?

And the big deal is. A lot of these animals come into consult and we go out with antibiotics. They really got a bacterial infection every time, you know, is it, how relevant is that?

How much do they need them and are we actually overusing? So here's Cascade, I'm sure it's be available afterwards, so you can read through it properly. It's, it's far too interesting for this time of evening.

But you know, this is how you're supposed to follow things things down there. So what you're supposed to use. So yes, technically, if you have a licence antibiotic, you should use that.

You also have this exemption scheme for small animals in the UK. They are slightly different between countries. And these are basically reflecting the fact there's very little study done on small mammals.

So basically, you can get a field data and you can get this, this exemption, medicine. It's not a full licence. So basically on the cascade, you are not compelled to use them, you know, prevented from using them.

You just use them in your professional judgement, as to whether they should do. And that's really important, the use of professional judgement, in the whole of this choosing of drugs. Because you may feel that the licenced drug is not the right drug.

It's not going to do it. And there are examples where that's going to be the case, . And so, you know, it may be where it's penetrating, whether it's the right activity.

Also, as well, AMR comes into, we talk a little bit less in the moment because that is a reason for coming off Cascade. Big deal too, is a bacterial infection, and this is important before you start reaching for antibiotics, handing out the bayl, honey, whatever else to diagnose it. Really important is a lot of these bacterial infections are not primary bacterial infections.

They have underlying factors, underlying drivers, but yeah, you can treat the anti bacteria, you can give them antibiotics, they're not going to work. Example being snuffles and rabbit, you know, great pastoralosis, fantastic disease caused by pasturella. I treat pastorosis very few resistances, it should go away.

Very rarely does. These underlying factors, be they irritation, allergy, dental disease, drive it onwards, so the antibiotics just don't work. So no good just changing.

You got to find those underlying factors and put them right. So how do we actually diagnose a bacter infection? Well, likelihood's there, you know, if you have a rat, we, we, we, with raspy breathing, we'll talk about that later on too.

So we don't do too well too much on that right now. Then there's a likelihood thing. We can do culture, and talk some shortfalls that in the moment.

We can do cytology, and cytology is really underused, because it's quick, it's simple, it's easy. It's going to show you bacteria. It's going to show the cellular response to bacteria and show whether they be engulfed.

And that really is probably the ideal way if you're dealing with solid things, histopathology is basically, if you like, solid tissue cytology. And those are probably the best ways of doing it and utilise those a lot more. I mentioned that antimicochromium resistance.

It's important. A lot of what we've got out there are things like fluoroquinolones. These are critically important antibiotics.

We don't really want to sling them around too much. So we can use that as an excuse to coming off cascade, as underusing critically important antibiotics, we can maybe go down a bit and you saying less critically important when it's when it's as appropriate in terms of treating. And of course, the small animals got to worry about gut toxicity that we can, so these antibiotics will definitely affect the gut flora and then cause these dysbiosis, causes diarrheas, which can be fatal.

In some of them like guinea pigs who are really sensitive, you get these, this water infiltration edoema of the gut in response to antibiotics, and that will cause a really horrible, generally, fatal, diarrhoea. So you have to be very careful though. So a choice is very restrict in terms of that.

Again, bear in mind with some of them, it will rabbits, the roots import as well. So they might be absolutely fine with it, with say a penicils injected but not have it by mouth. That's important too, so you have a bit of leakage onto the skin.

Bear in mind they may be companion licking it. If you're packing an abscess with it, there may be leakage of antibiotic into the mouth or may be groomed by another, and that can cause problems in them. So mentioned about doing bacterology again, do be careful about what you're actually getting.

Because, you know, where you stick your swabs important. You know, are you going to find pathogens? Are you going to find commensals?

How you going to interpret those? I think contamination, so reaching that swab into the right place, is going to get contamination. And in many places, are you really going to find anything?

So for example, if you're going to stick, your, your swab in the middle of an abscess, which is full of inhibitory factors and things that kill bacteria, are we going to get anything out of that? Similarly, if we got so which doesn't have a, have a bacterial infection, wherever we grow is probably irrelevant. So we got to go in context.

Very important to you, if you're going to do culture, do anaerobic culture as well, because there are certain situations that, that, that's very important to get very different results. It's really helpful. So above all, we've really got to look at the significance of those results, to treat that patient on machine, a sheet of results because What we're looking at are actually the survivors.

We're looking at bacteria that are happy to go onto a swab, go into a thing of charcoal, go through the paste, get to the lab, and then grow in an artificial surroundings in there. It's not always the actual most relevant one, it only wants to grow in a body cavity. Again, are we swapping the right place?

We do see cases where we got, you know, let's say a rabbit with a nasal discharge. And we've had swabs taken from the back of the throat, or we've got a rabbit pneumonia, we've had nasal swabs taken. You know, if you don't get the right bits sampled, it's not going to show anything.

If you have, say, a lung abscess, again, something like a lung wash is great to do, but actually what you're doing is you're washing the outside of the abscess. You need to be into abscess, get the sample. And sometimes that reason is better taking tissue samples.

So you have a solid lesion, then you can take a tissue sample and get grow that instead. So all of that increasing relevance and real shows relevant is to combine that with cytology or histopathology. We often have to use first guesses, because it takes a while to get the results back.

And in those cases, you use the more basic drugs. So again, on your likelihood, you, you have some idea what's the bacteria you'll find and where and doing what. So things like trimethrin, sulfonamides great, tetracyclines are fantastic drugs, often underused.

We use the basic penicillins by injection. If we suspect anaerobes, we can use metronidazole with that too. And the 1st and 2nd generation cephalosporins can be used.

Avoid the, the, the, the 3rd generation if possible. I think the answer would be a rapid abscess. You know, we know we've got bacteria.

If we just give it antibiotics, we're not like to achieve very much because this bacteria got a big capsule around them. Now that's the body trying to push them out, but it's also going to protect the bacteria from your antibiotics. It's a long time to get in there.

So we can open up there, we can stick a swab in there, but eventually we got inhibitory factors a problem. So this approach I'll generally take is when I'm operating, I will take, when I'm opening the abscess up, I will take a section of the wall. I will send that for culture.

The results you get back are really startling. A lots of anaerobics in there. So do send these tissue samples off for anaerobic culture as well.

We often rabbits culture pastureella. Again, just bear in mind what that means too. Back to pastorosis is pastorop pathogen.

Well, it can be if it wants to be. In a healthy rabbit, bear in mind it is a commensal. It is of little significance.

So don't use proflica antibiotics, but do consider other rabbits coming in, particularly got like new young rabbits that maybe they may be more immune and naive and might be a problem. If it's a colony of disease, that may be important, but you do get different pathogenities. But more importantly too, if anybody remembers back to the calf medicine days, you know, if you see pasturella pneumonias, you do a visit, you go and check the environment, you check out all the factors that drive on and increase the likelihood of that pastor becoming pathogenic and reduce your antibiotic load from doing that.

If you've got a disease older or individual rabbit again can consider it significant, far more likely with the comal overgrown in the wrong circumstance, and you've got to really think about those underlying causes. When we see antibiotic failure again, don't just reach for that new drug, just change, change, change. Consider what you're doing, you got a dose rate right, was the right drug to penetrate, you know, things like, most of these drugs won't penetrate into abscesses and stuff anyway, because of the activity where we're actually doing the right drug against right bacteria.

To be culturist, to send to the right place? Was that a problem? What we underline cause, have we addressed those?

And also, a lot of these things have been brewing for years, dental abscess, all those sort of things. These may be months to years in the making. 5 days of even the most super duper antibiotic is not going to touch it.

Again, really important, you always manage people's expectations use these drugs and don't expect too quick a response sometimes. OK, move on to neuturing, ask a couple of questions about this, about timing and also about anaesthetic protocol, which again I'll do a specific side on that later on. And also a little bit too, I think we can we should always consider about why we actually do this.

So the thing about females, for rabbits obviously do to prevent breeding. We do this for, prevent forced pregnancies to some extent, but a big one is, of course, uterine adenocarcinoma, which is, although not as high as the the lab, populations, it's still quite a high percentage. For guinea pigs, we might just assist prevention or that's a topic's own right, and, and probably it's probably not a good enough reason in my view to, to, to justifying spaying them, but that might be so I hate spaying guinea pigs.

We do it for breeding control, and we do see occasional tumours and pymetra in female guinea pigs. Again, is that enough to justify it? Because this is a big deal.

We know we have major anaesthetic risks in a lot of these small mammals. If you go back to the old CEPSA study, we're looking at our young healthy animals undergoing neutering, the death rate within 48 hours was about 1 in 150. So whatever you're trying to prevent has to be worse than that.

Now, when you trying to car with female rabbits, I think that's easy to justify it is more common than that, so it's worth that risk. But is it safe for controlling signs of cysts, which often none and a guinea pig? So when do we spa?

Well, for rabbits, I tend to do 4 to 6 months. I train it when they're big enough you can find the uterus easily and also before they get too fat, so we operate the operation a lot easier. In guinea pigs, I'll only do I have to, I will not do prophylactic spaying because I just find the operation is just one of my least favourite to do.

It's difficult. And again, that thing about do you do a very very hysterectomy, Percy rabbits, I'll always do ovarian hysterectomy because I'm selling it to people as being to prevent cancers, prevent tumours. And there are other tumours apart from uterine adenocarcinoma.

And although we might think that's hormone-driven, that's not yet proven. And I think if you want to really prevent tumours, you're gonna have to remove the whole damn thing. For guinea pigs, I'm having to do this, I'll probably go more down the ovarectomy, route, because it's just that much simpler than trying to remove that whole uterus.

And then most you can do midline with guinea pigs, again, one option you have got, especially in sy space, is to do bilateral flank, approach that can be a lot quicker for just doing a variectomy. Frustrating males again, why we do this, well, probably do some breeding reasons, obviously, sometimes behavioural problems, although most of these behavioural problems tend to be normal male behaviours in an abnormal situation. So people just don't like them.

You do see, testicular tumours in rabbits that are uncommon. But you do see them. Most important part for rabbits is the situation here.

We get fight damage. They all seem to try and castrate each other. As soon as you got a lot of rabbits together, then, you know, probably, it's a good idea to castrate them.

Less common in guinea pigs, so maybe it's a less of a reason for that. If you're gonna do it, generally rabbits will do it 3 to 4 months earlier if there's a risk of impregnating a female, and, you know, testes are visible. In guinea pigs, you can do it from 2 months old.

So so if you see sexual activity beginning earlier, which is unusual, but can happen. Bear in mind the guinea pigs too. Never mind the anaesthetic risk.

There are a lot of post castration issues. We've been sort of collecting some data and stuff from some ours and also from referred cases. And we've seen all kinds of things like the swollen, scrotums afterwards.

So we see infections, we've seen foreign body reactions, to, suture material, to things like hay and stuff. We've seen stump abscesses reactions, and stump tumours. Hernias obviously to come through too.

So actually must, we've changed our approach. We do do more of a pre-scope to create a route now. We've changed post-op care and also stitch skin runs, glue it.

We, we post-op care, we keep things much cleaner, and have special areas prepared for them for a few days after before it all seals up. And we have seen a marked, marked reduction in problems with that. So I think again a care issue with these guys is important.

So again, advice really with rabbits. I would tend to spay the females to castrate some males male to male. If you've got a male with a, with a loan with a female, I'd spay the female leave a male alone, and really think about anaesthetic and improve that, and then you tilt the odds a lot to make it more worthwhile.

For guinea pigs, again, and for smaller rodents too, don't forget you have the option of single sex groups. And that's a good way of managing them. And again, removes the need for doing surgery, which is a good thing.

So if you don't have an option, tend to castrate the males, leave the females alone, and possible exception rats, we might want to do a prophylactic spraying because of mammary tumours and stuff. But again, not really very well proven that one. That's about my protocol for rabbit castration.

We tend to use midazolam, buprenorphine, pre-meds now, Siva fluorine induction and isofluorine maintenance. If we want to move a roof at gas, we're trying to do a bit, we're trying to, to protect blood pressure and the environment, of course. We've been, we've been to think about moving over to our facts and induction after pre-medication, very early days, so I can't really tell you how well that's going.

But a lot of people like that. The question is also about what if no gas. Now, this is a bit weird, really.

I wasn't too sure what the question meant. So please, if you're on that in the, I haven't got this right, please, please, please raise a hand at the end. If you've got no isophone, slow, you could consider alpha and increments, with a sort of burst of opiate, painful bits.

So some IV, short-acting sort of fence style, whatever, really painful. It's like moving the ovaries and stuff in a female. But, you know, I don't know how safe that's going to be.

If you've got no oxygen, I really wouldn't, wouldn't use a total intravenous without oxygen support there. So I don't think that's really safe enough at that point. You really got to question what the benefit is, especially like castration, what that would be.

If I got wrong end of a stick there, please tell me. Obviously, you asked about nutrient ferrets and adrenal disease, a very quick skim through, as everybody knows, I can talk about this for an hour on its own right. Basically the rules to this one, surgical nutrients linked to adrenal disease development, that's linked to daylight trenches and a lack of hormonal feedback we're missing guns on LH production.

This leads to chronic stimulation of sex hormone producing cells in the adrenal, and that leads to hyperplasia and tumour. Desore implants are really effective instead of surgery, reducing the maleness or femaleness of the animal, and that's really good. If you have already got a neutered animal, then certain animal, then you can use the dens around the implants.

They should be effective preventing adrenal disease. Other alternatives are available. You can use progesterone injections for gills when they're in season each year, and they can sort of use several a year because it just, temporarily prolonged, some season.

And if you've got like a working situation, the vasectomy hob will also induce ovulation, do the same, same deal. But you will get a lot of damage to the, to, to the, to the skin of a gel. The consequence of not controlling the jill's, season are pretty dire.

Chronic hyperestrogenism will lead to anaemia, which can be fatal. Moving from one hypergen of course to another, that's like Cushing's and hamsters. This is quite common.

Clinical signs are, and this is steroid overproduction, not sex hormone overproduction, just to bear in mind. So it's a true Cushing's. So you get hair loss, you get skin discoloration and thinning, and you get polyure polydipsia, so very like situation of the species.

Difference is that diagnosis is much more tricky and so is treatment. You do have differential clinical signs. They are fairly, characteristic, but some tumours will look back to, especially mycosis vangoides.

But, you can, you know, use that, it's pretty characteristic appearance. You can use blood cortisols, and they can measure those, difficult to get blood in hamsters, but you can measure blood cortisol. And you can do, urine, course of creatinine ratios, care with those because the levels are quite low.

And so even minor changes in, either one can result in quite, quite marked change that ratio. And different labs, different protocols, and you get kind of interesting answers from different labs. So you got to use their, their, their normals and their ratios then.

Above all, all these things is stress affects them. So stressing the hamster and getting a blood sample is going to lead to a high cortisol level and that may be temporary or whatever. Getting a urine sample is not that easy either.

So again, you may have stress effects. I I was a bit stressed to my husbandry anyway. Again, you may see those, those high UCCRs.

So just be careful about that. Easily enough to, to overdiagnose by, by the, by the testing. So let's say you do get spectacular levels and the chronic stimulator you got and you got issues there too.

What can you do? Well, mostly adrenal neoplasia. So again, one thing you have got there if you suspect you can do ultrasound, and obviously, if you get negative findings, it may mean you haven't found it.

It may mean you've got a pituitary-based problem or may mean it's not Cushing's. But if you do find a large adrenal, you probably have a diagnosis there with the right side. You can do surgery in that case.

So a flank approach will allow you to get to your adrenal, and that is possible, tricky but possible. Drugs have been used. Ketocon has been tried and failed.

the BSAVA manual suggests, that meta metiropone has been tried for a month and had some success, but limited number of cases, I think, from a paper there. Other drugs, more conventional ones used in dogs have a very low safety margin, and lack of study in these. So it can be tried, but bear in mind there may be a lot of side effects.

So they're not generally done. And that's partly because of question marks over effectiveness, partly just difficulty in dosing. These are small animals, not a lot known about the dose rates, so marginal change, marginal overdosing is going to have a profound effect quite easily.

Also, these are older hamsters. These are animals like an 18 month 2 year life expectancy. So you often have a lot of other issues going on at the same time.

And therefore, you know, even if you treat this successfully, how much additional life are you going to get? How much quality of life you're gonna get for what you've done to the animal. So if you are attempting treatment, do bear in mind that an animal is 18 months.

A 1 month effect is actually a really good one. It's quite an extension of life. But to an owner who's having to do the management seeing the side effects, and, and having to give this and pay for it, they may not appreciate that fully at the time.

Again, always look at what welfare benefits are, because actually a lot of these animals, although they're bald, although they're drinking a lot, actually they seem to be behaving quite normally, quite happy in themselves, and so therefore you may not be gaining an awful lot through through pushing them too hard, but all these things need to take into account when you consider a treatment and stuff. I was asked about some brief notes on some up from hedgehogs. We see quite a few of these.

In fact, we had a pygmy hedgehog day the other day with lots of them were coming in. Bear in mind he's not the same species or genus as European hedgehogs. They do have some similar biology there, of course they do kill up and have lots of prickles over them.

So it's similar in that respect. That means that handling and examination are tricky. It's very hard to examine a boarded up hedgehog like that and get anything meaningful, as mentioned about rectal temperature and stuff.

So very often you do a lot of your examination while, while they're under anaesthesia, and just to, to use the gas induction and have a good look over them. But of course, that will affect a lot of your parameters. While they're out, I would tend to treat them like a zoo animal, and I would therefore try and do a lot of investigation at the same time to save having to go back and do it again another day.

So if I'm looking at, I'll generally get permission to do things like X-rays, a couple of views, and take bloods at the same time if I find something suspicious or not immediate or clinical examination. Fact husbandry, one of the big problems is obesity, vast majority of we come in are really huge. They have a very mixed up.

They meet, meat, fruit, insects, peets, things. The big deal is hedgehogs really forage long distances every night. They work really hard for their food.

It captive if they don't. And because they're forages, they kind of switch on they find food, they eat it, find food, they eat it, find it, and this goes on like that. So no excise, lots of foraging, and he press so you end up with enormous hedgehog, and that has effects.

They also are sadly, I think it's a beautiful animals. I really like them, except for the fact they don't live very long because they are little tumour factories, and it's really common from 18 months, 2 years on to get tumours in them. This is a very large abdominal tumour.

We get a lot of mouth tumours too, very often malignancies like squamous cell carcinomas, and again, various ones are affecting eyes all over the body. These are often malignant. It's, it's relatively unusual to have a benign.

So it's, it's really rather sad. In the younger animals or newly purchased animals, stressed animals, we'll often see mange. I treat this with injectable vermectin, injectable because I'm a bit of a control freak.

Also because, I know it's in the animal, and with the port with this sort of spot on ones, especially with the spiny coats. It's not always easy to make sure you get a full dose on there. The dose is quite broad in these from 200 to 600 mcg per kilogramme, with quite a little bit more than some of the other species for some reason.

but it's quite a common thing if you have an itching, self- excoriating hair job, really start, start thinking mange before anything else. And probably the most easy to diagnose is that I mating test dose. That's probably the most common disease we see.

In the older hedgehogs that we are seeing more and more of this, which is heart disease. Again, clinical signs and to be to be slower. They tend to be, often may have breathing problems.

We see these X-rays, very large hearts, a lot of fluid effusion in there, then we will, we've got lung compression that can be a problem with them. And often we get ascites as well, which can be a problem. Diagnosis, again, sometimes you pick up murmur auscultation, but generally imaging is going to give you some idea of the heart size and stuff there.

In terms of management, we're getting success for using diuresis, and immaendan seems to be quite, quite effective, to give a better quality of life. We do see reproductive disease, especially with females, and we do get, uterine tumours, and pymetra, usually typifies by a vulval discharge and a sick hedgehog, and spaying seem to work quite well. And the middle-aged older animals, arthritis is a huge problem, and we get the spinal lesions.

And again, these are animals who are often reluctant to exercise, move around very stiffly or slowly, or just generally very quiet indeed. Again, the value of radiography in these, as you can see, is, is quite useful. I was asked about the role of corticosteroids and the, treatment.

This was, a really interesting one because Eico of course is the disease is not linked so much to the bug itself, but to the immune response. So in some ways, corticosteros needs to make sense. There's to be special case in head tail cases.

Unfortunately, if you read the papers and stuff, there's actually no evidence that corticosteroids have any effect in these acute head tilt cases. So it seems very tempting and for years I used to use steroids, and antibiotics, those ones. I've now switched on.

I tend to manage them with, anti-nausea and, antilytic drugs, and I get the same degree of success rate. So this goes to show really. Big thing is you got you had to, generally at this stage you don't know it's ekiculi, .

Ear disease is much more common in my practise. And if there's no ty in turner, you probably don't want to use steroids, you might have problems. And certainly, if you've got some abscessation inside, you definitely don't want to use, steroid.

So you've got, probably got not enough diagnosis to really use them at the stage where corticoids might actually have some effect or might not. So probably only diagnose you can when it's too late to use the steroids in the first place. However, if you've got a head tilt case is not responding a long term one, is there a role for anti-inflammatory in those because you may have some abscess, you know some reaction to, to, to inflammatory, to, to, to infective agents, make some inflammatory media or wandering around there.

And maybe those you could consider steroid, low dose, for longer term. Maybe other anti-inflammatories. Some colleagues of mine have tried cyclosporin and said they work OK.

I found no success with cyclosporin, but I've used a very limited number of cases. So, probably I would be using non-steroidal anti-inflammation in this case, really sort of make sure where it doesn't seem to hurt so much. But yeah, it's an interesting question.

And I think probably it's one of things where there's theoretical, consideration for it, but in the in the field, it doesn't seem to have much effect. The question really gave me some bother with this one. And I've never seen it.

I really like, good grief, as to say I'm missing and and went through books. It doesn't appear to be a significant problem in pet rats. I would love that if a person who asks this question, if they've seen it, please talk to me about it, or please talk or put some stuff up there because, it's not really a significant problem.

It's recently lab-based and rats are used to study, crystal urri and people. Particularly these two strains, Sprague Dawley and Long Evans seem to be really prone to this. So obviously there's a big genetic association with it.

It may also be associated with neoplasia and urinary infection, and some of the pathologies you get with these, these, these stones and crystals are quite significant. So you know, renal abscessation, and full blockage and stuff like that too. So it doesn't appear to be a problem in pet rats, But you know, again, different people's experience may vary.

I think I'd be nice to what what's out there because some of these strains will come through in pet rats too occasionally. The important to just to bear in mind, just like cats, just be careful having urine checked. It's not easy getting a urine sample from a rat.

So generally it's going to be a slightly age sample. So if you are getting an old coal sample, do warm it slightly so you get some of these crystals back in solution. It's easy to overestimate the number of crystals there.

So maybe still be careful, but yeah, anything you guys can teach me, I'd be very grateful. And that's about managing respiratory in rats. This is a common, common problem, the exact opposite really, and can be, really difficult, .

Lots of different things involved. Reason for that is many different and infectious agents may be involved, so various viruses, a few different bacteria, mycoplasma, of course, most common of all. And also underlying causes, so maybe irritation, there may be, immune suppression, maybe stress, and you've got a colony of rats and only ones getting contrarespiratory problem.

Look where it is in a social strata very often it's right down the bottom. So chronic stressors really do have a problem. And you can manage all of these.

To, to, you know, to, to, to, to, to get to grips them. So clinical signs respiratory smear, porphine discharges, secs, may just weight loss, exercise intolerance, mange, you know, you've got a rundown immunosuppressed rat, and they may start showing problems because they've got mange and start itching and something scabs on my skin, and that's because the immune system really isn't working very well. So these are very, very non-specific signs, that's quite common.

One thing you can do, by the way, is always when you're doing a rat examination palpate the chest, if it's not springy, it feels like a solid lump, there may well be a solid, something in there. In terms of diagnostics, well, you know, lots of infectious agents now let's do we trained as vets, with lung washes. We can do PCR cultures of those, we can do serology for these infectious agents.

But actually, does it really matter which virus you find in there, but you can't treat them anyway. You know, what's the serology can tell you, and you may have mixed infections, yeah, and these are expensive. And some of these are not readily available because they're lab-based only.

So just be a little bit careful. It seems it's an easy way to go. So really you're looking for what is common and how to manage that whole case, that whole animal.

So start with acute cases, look for the underlying causes, so stressors, other rats where they have social stras, that kind of thing. I mean newly obtained, have been mixing a pet shop, that kind of stuff, irritants too. You know, he's often going kids' bedrooms and stuff where, you know, lots of sprays get used, lots of chemicals get up there, you know, teenage kids, when they, when my, when do they open the bedroom window when there been ventilation in there.

These are important factors. Some of the beddings, especially in shavings and stuff like that, especially start adding urine into there, can release gases can be quite noxious. The poor rat's nose is actually quite close to these, that can be another source of irritants.

You do trial therapies, generally, mycoplasma is the most common agent involved. So things like fluquinone, if you want to go there, doxycycline also available, azithromycin, really good antimicrobial, mycoplasma drugs. So you can use those.

Anti-inflammatories as well. Again, you're gonna get reaction to them and back to farm animal days, anti-inflammy really help recovery from these two. A lot of people like nebulization, F10's got a big name in the rat world and people want to use it.

It's great if you've got an acute case, if you've got an option of reaction around it. But once you start getting consolidation, nebuli droplets are not going to get to the right places and they're not going to help too much. The only stage might help with clip being expectorant, but not much beyond that, unfortunately.

So not really manage it seems. If they're really dynamic and really struggling, do give oxygen and do radiograph these. And if you've got fluid, you can do chest strains, stuff like that too, because once again, heart disease is really common, and a lot of these non-responsive and rats have gone through lots of antibiotics have massive hearts, and they've got heart disease, not, not respiratory infection, to be careful there.

Again, if you got no improvement to your first treatment, if you've got a relapsing case, do go back to diagnostics and things too. Let's say it is respiratory, radiography is great. It's gonna show you things like this where you've got one nice lung here, one absolutely solid wiped out lung there.

Now the great thing about that so lung is you can pop a needle through a chest wall, you can do an FNA of that, this culture of that. You can use cytology from there. You can find out whether you've got a tumour, whether you've got a granuloma.

It's like granuloma say azithromycin is a cool drug to use exactly into the white cells and it gets taken into there, that can help you quite a bit. So if you've got chronic respiratory disease, again, these these rats have been wheezing for years, can consider alternative antibiotics, some of the bacteria are more likely response, say maybe penicillin or trimethrin sulfonamide. I use a lot more, theophylline now, so opening up the airways and trying to get to breathe easier and improve things from there.

And that seems to help in addition to a non-steroid and the antibiotics. And if you're really desperate, you've got a lot of reaction in there. Sometimes just for a short term quality of life, and corticosteroids can be helpful.

But if they really are something like acute infection, do be careful. You'll take that immunity down a bit, so make sure you go underlying causes under some degree of control before you do that. That is very much a last ditch attempt.

So, a bit of a whistle through. Sorry, it's a bit bitty, but it's kind of like the questions we got. They're quite fun.

I tried to link them, but let's see if it worked. Thank you for listening. Just a brief mention, obviously, we're, because we're having, we're having a major communications problems.

If people have got cases and things they want advice about, we've always run free advice to vets, through whatever, and we're happy to continue that. These are contact details to ask questions if you want to do that. And we'll continue doing that to give support, which means people have to travel less far, and, again, get, get care closer to home, which hopefully will be helpful.

Above all, guys, stay safe and, let's see if you've got time for questions. John, that was absolutely amazing. Even though you call it bitty, the, the knowledge that you've given us is really, really fantastic.

And once again, I'd like to thank Burgess for their support and their sponsorship of tonight. We have got loads of questions coming through as we would have guessed. Folks, if you want to drop off, by all means do.

I think you're gonna miss out if you do. But please feel free to drop off. It's absolutely fine.

John, when you were talking about the rats, with the, the crystals and everything else, Suzanne popped through and she said, hi, the revi rats are mine. I get them to pee in the weighing weighing scales and do a full urinalysis in-house immediately. I've had two cases.

And immediately after that, Tara said, I recently did microscopy on a rat's urine. I couldn't believe the amount of struvite I saw. What clinical signs were they showing?

Were they showing urinary related signs? You can pop that into the Q and A box. Or alternatively, if you want, you guys want to email me later with a telephone number to discuss it, I'd be really interested.

It's absolutely nowhere in the pet stuff. So it may just be that, I mean, they shouldn't. Have normal strevi in there because they should have alkaline urine and strewvi course requires some acidity to it.

So that should be abnormal. What I did find was that diet doesn't seem to help with these guys. Obviously other facts there, but anyway, I'm really interested.

Sorry, Bruce Suzanne said the clinical signs were peeing blood. Cool. OK.

Wow. Brilliant. Please get in contact.

I'd love to know some more detailed cases and for goodness' sake, please guys, put these cases together and publish them because if you don't publish them, they won't get out there and we we none of us learn. There you go, there's a challenge and John will talk you through how to do that because he is very, very good at publishing and sharing his knowledge. So good for you.

John, we've got loads of other questions. We have run over, but I'm gonna keep going if that's OK with you. So we've had a couple of questions, about guinea pigs, one of which was, the difference between stitches and glue.

Right. OK, I mean, I was taught to do scrotal approach and to glue the skin because they tend to stitch glue, sorry, I've lost it. She stitches out.

So they tend to glue the skin and we do our rabbits and lots of things all the time, don't get much bothering. Guinea pigs seem to bother their wounds a bit more with glue and stuff and open them, and I think that's how the haze is getting in and getting these foreign bodies. Hey.

So actually what I tend to do now is I tend to put a couple of stitches in each side, the pre-scra to put a cup stitching and then glue on top of that and a bit of extra protection. But we take the stitches by using a lot more local blocks. I'll do an incisional block, I'll do a splash block at the end.

I'm really just trying to hopefully get them over the stage we might want to chew them open until those edges of sealed together. That opens it up really nicely into one of, a lot of the other questions I was reading about intratsicular local to try and, make your anaesthetics a little bit safer for various species. Yeah, absolutely great.

We really are utilise, local anaesthetic. I was lucky enough I had a chance to listen to Angela and next lecture on this a couple of times, last year. And I'm using a lot, a lot more now.

It's very hard not to be inspired by her. And, you know, it really is great. It takes our anaesthetic load down to we get much better effects afterwards.

And if you're looking at analgesia, the only true analgesia are local because the only thing actually stops pain. Everything else is modifying effect and modifying inflammation. And give a drugs so often we don't know much about, we, we don't know much more PK about them, you know, we should be using more local, really.

Excellent. Going back to guinea pigs again, I have read that injections in the neck are very, very painful for these sensitive animals. Where is the best place to inject them?

It's difficult. I must say, I tend to inject in the neck, I got a big fat pad there. I tend to put things there, .

Everywhere else is sensitive to and again restraint and stuff can be difficult. So I do tend to use the neck. They do get stressed almost wherever you put things.

I've tried over making jabs all over the place. What's really painful, we're using, colon to human chronic gonadotrophin for the cyst cases. And that's a large volume it's quite stingy and those ones they really don't like, it's horrible giving it.

But yeah, I don't know if it's a better site. So I tend to use that there. One thing about the neck is there's a lot of space, and you do wherever you go, make sure there's some space for the jab to go.

Excellent. Here's a topic for your next webinar. Why do hamsters chew the hell out of their front paws?

Yeah, happens occasionally, various reasons, like all the case of chewing, you got to go right through the whole thing, try and get some diagnostics, try and find what's going on there, looking at my husbandry, look at what could be irritating them. So teeth can be involved because it's chewing everything in general because they're frantic. There's a lot of reasons for that and some skin disease, all kinds of things too.

Yeah. For your next webinar that sort of case we end up sobbing after a while because you're running out of options and we owe us £20 to work it up has run out and everything's gone wrong so. A couple of questions on behaviour, and Laura asks, with Daegus and chinchilla, is it best to keep them in the same-sex pairs and groups or mixed pairs and groups.

All work, all work. I think it is best to be doing singular sex groups is try not to have them too close to the other, group. You, you know, you do have some scent related things, some pheromone things.

So just be careful about that. But if you haven't got like male, they've got male degus, you haven't got female des, they're really pretty peaceful. They're the odd squabble and things and they may have a bit of a hierarchy thing, but you know, they're pretty peaceable things.

So, same-sex groups work, mixed work. If you're mixed, you really are going to have to, castrate, the males probably. And I think that's something we really do have to look at.

I mean, Scandinavians don't allow surgical neutering. Prophylactively, and then you don't know if it's a problem. I think ethically, we've got to have a little bit more about, you know, other ways to keep some of these animals without doing surgery.

And same-sex groups do work very well, and it's, it's in the zoo world, we do a lot with things. And, you know, maybe in the pet situation, we do it too, but we do go on just fine. Shelby wants to know how common is cardiac disease in rabbits?

What would be your diagnostic approach and what is the prognosis of good quality of life? OK. That webinar.

That is a whole webinar. It's really common, really common. We look for it.

Most common clinical sign for rabbits and guinea pigs things with, with cardiac disease is very simply weight loss. And so these rabbits, especially having a bit of trouble eating because the heart gets quite big, it's quite difficult. I think you get food past it.

Have that's what do we do? Well, basically generally radiographing is part of a workup anyway. I pick up a murmur, definitely do some more specific cardiac stuff.

We generally pick up a large heart then, then we'll do ultrasound, so we'll get more, more, more defined thing about what's going on that side of the heart there. And hopefully you got diagnosis by that stage. In terms of management, I generally use diuresis, so furosemide and add that generally pin the bend down.

In some case, so I think more forward failure. I do sometimes use, ACE inhibitors, probably more rabbits than any species. If we got renal rate signs with it, and sometimes you get a raised urea, where we went with heart things.

If I want more perfusion, I'll use an ACE inhibitor, like for, Benazapril, to, to really help those kidneys a bit. But otherwise tend to use PI bean. What's prognosis?

Some cases don't respond, but a lot of cases respond really, really well. We've had some on these, these combinations for years with a good quality of life. It's been great.

We had some where we've had, dysrhythmia things form we use anti dysrhythmics. Yeah, just like everything else. So we can, we can do those ECGs or specific diagnostics, and we can get some answers and we can help manage them with that too.

Excellent. Alex has got a hot potato for you. GA in bunnies, intubate, mask, or V gel.

Depends on what you're comfortable with. Must say if I'm doing a very quick set of X-rays which takes about 3 or 4 minutes, I will probably, just mask. But in general, I'll feed gel, .

Because I find it effective enough to ventilate. I really like the things I find easy to place. I find less trauma involved than with, with, ET tubes.

I just really love things. They're great. .

I will intubate a few cases. Generally, if I'm doing more complex dental work where I got work inside the mouth, I can't see past the V gel and the ET tube may be easier to maintain, but I don't ET tube many these days. Excellent.

Zoe or Zoe wants to know with reference to echiicula and head tilting in rabbits, what anti-nausea drug protocol and doses do you recommend? OK. First I probably go head tilts being very different to echiicular.

Echiconnect one potential cause of it. I think much less common there. But yeah, in terms of, really listening about dog stuff and things, and different types of vestibulisis which is more, more related to it, rabbits, although they can't vomit, do have nausea centres.

And nausea is a horrible thing. So I tend to use, metoclopramide, a low dose, can check through dose range to go on the lower end of that. A cage, I think I've used Sein as well, a standard, standard dose for that one.

Excellent. Just a little bit of technical stuff here. Caroline from New Zealand has just logged in.

She got the time conversion confused. Sorry, Caroline, welcome and thank you for joining us. And yes, we have recorded this.

It will be up on the website in a couple of days, so you haven't missed anything. You are hearing the best bit, which is the end. I think the best that was, the, the whole thing was good, John.

Don't be, don't be like that. The whole thing was good. Katerina asks, what did TMPS stand for?

There you go. Antibiotics. Loads and loads of comments coming through, John, about awesome presentation, fantastic.

Learned so much. Thank you. Please do this again.

Yeah, as Anthony likes to say, if we were in an auditorium, you would be hearing thunderous applause at this stage. It's the end. .

Gemma wants to know what sort of doses of vitamin C do you give to guinea pigs? Yeah, OK. I give them a human chew tab.

So it's 500 milligrammes, but I just give them a human size. They have a bigger requirement than people do. And it's one of those things you really can't really overdose it.

There's some urinate at the back end, so that's fine. So I just give a human chew tab each sprinkled over the food. I think really important vitamin C, don't put it in the water.

It breaks down very easily and it is very exposed in the water. Also, mostly if you're using drinkers, they've got zinc spouts and zinc deactivates vitamin C as well. So putting water just doesn't work.

So it's got to go on the food. This fruit flavoured chew tab. They tend to take really readily.

There are also commercial, versions available for small mammals. Again, as long as it goes into, into the food, and also with vitamin C, it breaks down so easily. So do check your foods in date and really close as manufactured date as possible, so fresh as possible, you have better vitamin C things.

And with guineas as well, don't forget fresh foods really important. Good old grass is great, and, also things like red pepper, and it's my guinea pigs really go, go for red pepper above everything else, and we can get those vitamin C levels up. Grass is great.

Sounds like something out of the 70s, John. I am something out of a 70s young man. Oh, I haven't been called young man in a long time.

I like you even more now. Laura's got a hot one for you. If you have two male rabbits that you're keeping together, would you neuter the dominant, submissive, or both?

Both. They, the damage. I mean, they'll probably do it do it for you if you don't go there quickly enough.

I, I would, that's the situation, I would castrate both. . Because I've just seen too much damage from they really do make a mess.

Rio wants to know, seeing you open it up, why do rabbit's nose twitch? I did mention myself. I think it's probably potentially a communication thing, .

I will find that out. I really don't know. It's, yeah, I, I've always presumed it's communication.

I, I just don't know the answer. I will, I will find Anne McBride and ask her cause she'll know a lot more than I will about that one. There you go.

Never ask or open up topics you don't know that. OK, there's loads of questions about doses. I don't want to go through all of them because you've already said, you know, refer to the, the formularies and read the latest literature because they are always changing.

I'm really sorry guys. I know wants doses. It's just what you want to do.

It's relevant for tomorrow. There are great sources out there. Just go for as most recent a source as possible.

I just don't want to be the one who misleads you. And so, you know, there's a few days I use regularly. Which I do remember in my head.

They're probably ones I'm dangerous about because I don't review them regularly enough. No ones I'm safest on are the ones where I don't remember and I have to look it up every single time I use it. So for example, I actually don't know the dose of metalop providing rabbits.

I would look that up every single time I used it. Excellent. Ria's got another question for us.

She says, why are we not to use atropine in CPR in rabbits? We can use it. You just take a bit of lottery, really.

That's because rabbits have a circulating atropinase in their blood. So it's, in many rabbits, it's going to be totally ineffective. If you're going to use that type of drug, use glycopyrolate.

And that includes also for using the eyes and stuff. So you do get UVI do want to use a midriatic. So use glycopyrelate in the eyes rather than atropine.

There you go. Interesting one. Mark, oh, Mark, I hope I'm gonna not mess your surname up.

Oldroy, Mark Oroy says, rabbits' noses twitch or blink to increase the airflow over sensitive glands within the nose, to identify smells quickly, to detect predators or seek out food and water. Twitching also aids breathing and is the rabbit's main means of communicating with other rabbits. Well, I got some marks.

That's good. Yes, that's really good. And it certainly actually explains a lot about why that, that, that twitch rate can go up when they're stressed.

I don't know any studies showing that, but I'm sure hopefully you're right there. But certainly if you're looking at something where it says you are trying to put things over, if you like, where potentially over Jacobson's all kind of stuff there, then actually that would be quite a good reason why it would go up when they're stressed and worried. But yeah, the big deal is certainly, Clinically whether we could use that to assess part of the stress of a rabbit, but also again just just owners of that thing we're brought up with that remote monitoring is don't make sure they're actually measuring the right thing with giving a breathing rate.

Excellent. John, I'm afraid we could go on all night here but I know you've had a a long 5 days. You've had a fabulous hour and a bit, and a quarter for us with lots and lots of helpful and useful information.

So thank you so much for your time tonight. Thank you and stay safe everybody. Guys, thank you for joining us on this webinar.

Once again, thank you to Burgess for their kind sponsorship, and thanks to Phil, my controller in the background for making everything run seamlessly. And from my side, Bruce Stevenson, good night.