Hi everyone,
I am new to the forum, just to be quick- I own four male guinea pigs, made up of two pairs of bonded brothers. Two are long haired and two are much younger and short haired. They have a fairly unique living situation I believe, we have an unfinished basement with a cement floor and they live down there in a large dog run (3X5). We used to use pine shavings for bedding but it was a nightmare to clean up so we have switched to fleece and puppy pads. Yesterday I went down to feed the herd breakfast and noticed what I thought was one scabbed over scratch on Pork Chop's bum (pork chop is one of the long haired pair). I assumed it was from fighting as marshmallow (short haired pair) had a small scratch near his eye. They normally don't fight so I assumed it was over pigloos, which I remedied by adding more hideouts for them. I went down today and was alarmed to pick him up and feel small scabs all over his bottom half. He was quite agitated when I was examining them (whistling, sighing and shaking and shivering) and they look like this....
I am of course very concerned but I don't have extra money to just take him into the vet sadly. What is going on?
I am new to the forum, just to be quick- I own four male guinea pigs, made up of two pairs of bonded brothers. Two are long haired and two are much younger and short haired. They have a fairly unique living situation I believe, we have an unfinished basement with a cement floor and they live down there in a large dog run (3X5). We used to use pine shavings for bedding but it was a nightmare to clean up so we have switched to fleece and puppy pads. Yesterday I went down to feed the herd breakfast and noticed what I thought was one scabbed over scratch on Pork Chop's bum (pork chop is one of the long haired pair). I assumed it was from fighting as marshmallow (short haired pair) had a small scratch near his eye. They normally don't fight so I assumed it was over pigloos, which I remedied by adding more hideouts for them. I went down today and was alarmed to pick him up and feel small scabs all over his bottom half. He was quite agitated when I was examining them (whistling, sighing and shaking and shivering) and they look like this....
I am of course very concerned but I don't have extra money to just take him into the vet sadly. What is going on?