Hair loss-White flakey with patches of red?

[jamielk92]

One of my guinea pigs has a patch of hair missing that I noticed yesterday. Yesterday the skin looked pretty normal except for a few tiny red specs. I checked again today and it looks white and sort of flakey with larger red patches. She also made some noises when I picked her up and was more fidgety than she was yesterday. Both of them seem to be scratchy a decent amount (I've had them for less than a week and they are my first ones so I can't exactly gauge how much a lot of scratching is.) I am guessing from reading around, that they are probably mites.

I've made a vet appointment for today in about 4 hours and would like to know if there's anything important I should know before going. From what I can tell it sounds like they have a special doctor that works with guinea pigs, but I understand that not all doctor's are as knowledgeable about guinea pigs as they should be. Anyway, I just wanted to know if there are any red flags I should look for. I've heard something about a skin scraping that can be painful and not accurate? or something like that?

Any information would be greatly appreciated as I want to make sure I am getting them the best treatment! Thank you!

[bpatters]

Where on the pig is the hairless spot? And is the pig scratching at that spot.

Skin scrapings are both painful and inaccurate. If they see mites on the scraping, it's 100% accurate. If they don't, there's a 50-50 chance that the pig has mites anyway and the scraping just missed them. If the vet thinks mites, I would insist on treatment rather than scraping.

Read www.guinealynx.info/mites.html and www.guinealynx.info/fungus.html for more information on skin conditions.

[jamielk92]

It's on the very top of her head. And I haven't seen her scratching it while I'm around. They're just both scratching all over it seems like. And if it is mites how much will treatment cost?

[PrincessAngel]

Treatment depends on what your vet uses. I know at our vet the other day she treated a rabbit for possible mites (skin scrapping was inconclusive) and she applied some Revolution behind the ears. The revolution was free because it was "stolen" from a puppy kit. The vet could also give the pig Ivermectin of some form that is normally either oral or topical, but I don't know how much it costs but it normally takes 3 treatments. So cost will depend on your vet.