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Post by betty on Dec 10, 2022 0:46:10 GMT -8
Yes, how is Avon?
My answer to your questions didn't save there sorry - so the heart failure was spotted with the increased fluid in the body cavity. X-rays can show the soft tissue outer margins and I think the organs were showing as slightly bigger than usual and possibly even displaced. I showed the original images to a second exotic vet and they confirmed the diagnosis too - so there must be more than one way to spot the condition.
I am certainly new to the high fat german diet - I must read back on any comments on that. As with the other post on here saying about the <4% fat being ideal - that really is the opposite. I suppose certain environmental conditions can change that - like I recently read an international thread on fresh food for guinea pigs and it was amazing what veg were 'right' in one country but avoided completely in another.
Do we know, with gerbil, if this 'fat' is a specific ingested type of fat molecule, or metabolised fat within the body or simply individual body chemistry. It almost sounded like their vet was suggesting that there was an inherited component to strokes themselves (rather than seizures) - which I hadn't really thought about before.
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Post by LilyandDaisy on Dec 10, 2022 12:30:08 GMT -8
The source for the 4% fat recommendation appears to be a veterinary manual, which unfortunately doesn't source that claim, though there are various studies of cholesterol in gerbils. This study found that coconut oil (one of the few plant-based saturated fats) caused high cholesterol in gerbils but safflower oil didn't (even at 15%). This would suggest that the source of fat is important, and it's possible this nuance was lost when the 4% fat recommendation (wherever that actually came from, I'm starting to have serious doubts about it) made its way into veterinary manuals. Safflower oil is more similar to the kinds of fats our gerbils are eating, than coconut oil. It's very difficult, perhaps impossible, to create a diet of unprocessed/minimally processed ingredients (as is the German style) which contains <4% fat and is balanced in other ways, according to the nutritional requirements used by labs and pet food manufacturers. It may be possible to do this with 4-6% fat. Grains themselves have 2-5% fat, so you really don't have much room to add fatty seeds and insects, which are where some of the key vitamins and minerals are. That said, I've sometimes wondered whether we don't feed our pet gerbils far more fatty seeds than they would naturally eat in the wild, because I've so far not heard of a source of fatty seeds that wild gerbils would have regular access to. When gerbil burrows have been dug up and the hoards inspected, they contain grains and dried plants, not sunflower seeds. Wild gerbils successfully live long enough to reproduce on whole-ingredient diets, which leaves three possibilities: a) the 4% fat recommendation is erroneous, or it only applies to certain fat sources. b) the generally assumed vitamin and mineral requirements are higher than necessary, and gerbils really can subsist on a whole-ingredient diet containing <4% fat. Gerbil nutritional requirements are really very sparsely researched, so labs mostly use rat or mouse requirements. And those assumed requirements are still often higher than necessary for various reasons. Wild gerbils might also have non-food sources of some minerals (such as eating soil, sand, bones etc), which for pet gerbils have to come from diet instead. It's particularly difficult to get calcium in a rodent diet without using fatty seeds or artificial supplementation, so maybe wild gerbils are getting that somewhere else. If you ignore calcium, you can actually create an apparently balanced diet of about 95% grains. c) Wild gerbils are eating >4% fat and possibly getting high cholesterol, but that's fine for them because they're going to live a few months and then be eaten by a predator. A wild gerbil almost certainly isn't going to live long enough to have a stroke or get gallstones so there's no selective pressure against a genetic mutation or a biological quirk causing high cholesterol, and it could even be beneficial in some way. It's an issue only because pet gerbils live into old age. I think all three options are probably true to some extent. There's a condition in humans called familial hypercholesterolaemia, which is a genetic predisposition to very high cholesterol levels, not caused by diet. A person with this diet would have to eat an incredibly restrictive diet to control their condition by diet alone, because the issue is with their physiology and not their diet. In fact, I found when playing around with my nutritional calculator that with gerbil diets, 4% fat appears to be a kind of lower limit that you really can't go below, which suggests to me that if gerbils get high cholesterol on diets over 4% fat, it's a feature of gerbils rather than a dietary problem and possibly not something we should necessarily try to avoid. But, that doesn't necessarily mean we should be feeding 15-20% fat as some gerbil diets contain.
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Post by betty on Dec 10, 2022 15:50:55 GMT -8
How very VERY interesting - thank you for taking the time for such detail and discussion.
I will certainly re-read this again in the morning and have a look around the subject myself as I an intrigued by your 'limiting factor' conclusion on the mimimum fat linked in with your other comments.
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Post by Markpd on Dec 10, 2022 17:52:04 GMT -8
Very interesting post LilyandDaisy I've pulled this small list from a note file of mine, regarding Gerbil wild food. Mongolian gerbils mainly feed on the foliage of Artemisia sieversiana (Wormwood, daisy family) and spp, prefered food Wang et al 2011 Salsola spp = multiple species, (Saltwort)., preferred food Wang et al 2011 Setaria viridis (Wild foxtail millet, predecessor of Setaria italica Foxtail millet, a small grain crop) and Leymus chinense (False wheatgrass, wild rye, Sheepgrass(US?), Chinese rye grass) (all above from Ågren et al., 1989a)[correction, it's actually called Leymus chinensis (Poaceae)].
From home.wtal.de/ehr/gerbils/wild.htm "RODENTS IN DESERT ENVIRONMENTS", ed. by I. PRAKASH & P. K. GHOSH, 1975 - books.google.co.uk/books?id=uwfwCAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Alhagi kirghisorum, Corispermum duriusculaAs for Avon, he's bounced right back , you'd never known he'd been ill! I still haven't heard back from the original vet as he's been on holiday (& so no x-rays yet), but I have had a quote from another vet there for removing the stone, £809!!! . I don't know if that's normal vet prices, but that's bonkers!! [bleh, after the works xmas do I'm not feeling so good now! I'll finish this post tomorrow!]
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Post by betty on Dec 11, 2022 6:22:57 GMT -8
I wouldn't be feeling well if I got quoted near a thousand for a vets bill! We don't even charge that for some of our 'expensive' dentals at my vets. We only really go over the £800 mark (for large dogs) for overnight stays with a surgery.
Hope you feel better too and haven't got your own gall bladder trouble to worry about after the Xmas party!!!
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Post by Markpd on Dec 11, 2022 10:50:07 GMT -8
Lol, no I'm fine now thanks , I was mostly feeling a bit rough from over eating, some people didn't turn up, so I ended up eating near enough 2 meals! Can't let lovely food go to waste! I was going to ask you how that compared to your vets, good to know! Here's the quote (I don't suppose the formatting will hold!) :-
General Anaesthetic Small Pet <60Mins £ 72.77 £ 72.77 20.0 % 1.0 Hospitalisation Exotic Pet Per 12H Or Part Thereof £ 24.68 £ 24.68 20.0 % 1.0 Inpatient Care Exotic Pet Per 12H Or Part Thereof £ 24.68 £ 24.68 20.0 % 1.0 Assisted Feeding Per 12H £ 7.40 £ 7.40 20.0 % 1.0 IV Cannula (Peripheral) Placement £ 31.28 £ 31.28 20.0 % 1.0 Cystotomy £ 626.44 £ 626.44 20.0 % 1.0 METACAM ORAL SUSP (CAT) 3ML £ 22.36 £ 22.36 20.0 % total £ 809.62
Hmm, I can't remember what else I was going to say now! Oh yea, I shall ask the vet anyway, but I wondered if you guys had any idea whether (assuming no surgery's done) I could just treat him with metacam for the rest of his life, or even if I need to?
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Post by betty on Dec 12, 2022 4:26:53 GMT -8
I will check the rest but that metacam is more than double what we charge already.
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Post by LilyandDaisy on Dec 12, 2022 8:51:34 GMT -8
I'm sure a 3ml bottle of Metacam only costs about £5 online. I know they add in a dispensing fee as well (not that they have to do anything with a ready packaged bottle except take it out of the cupboard), but £22!
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Post by Markpd on Dec 12, 2022 12:43:08 GMT -8
Wow! So they're pricey then! (I guess that's how they're paying for their new surgery!!). Curiously the metacam was £19.45+VAT when I took him in (that's for 10ml), not that that was cheap though!
And now that you've mentioned it, I had a quick look online (2nd listing) and found 10ml metacam for £6.40 delivered (although it needs a prescription).
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Post by LilyandDaisy on Dec 12, 2022 14:27:21 GMT -8
You can ask for a written prescription and they're obliged to give one, but they can charge a fee for this which might cancel out any savings you might have made buying online.
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Post by Markpd on Dec 15, 2022 11:14:23 GMT -8
And now I'm worried about Blake, he looks lethargic and eyes partially closed, he came out for his treats, but didn't hang around for his dinner or veg, nor did he visit the other tank or the sandpen, he normally never passes an opportunity to go out! (and often begs for it! lol), and he was walking around quite slowly. So something isn't right .... Btw, Avon seems just fine, and despite the cold temperatures atm, the minimum temp where the gerbils are was 16.6C today and 16.1C last night.
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Post by LilyandDaisy on Dec 15, 2022 16:50:02 GMT -8
Oh no, poor Blake. Please let us know how he gets on.
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Post by Markpd on Dec 16, 2022 10:31:30 GMT -8
A quick update, this morning he seemed fine, and he's fine now! Relieved, but also puzzled as to what was up with him! And will it return?? Oh, video link of him not well yesterday - photos.app.goo.gl/4MW5yjyJ8xGbTnpRA
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Post by LilyandDaisy on Dec 16, 2022 10:49:46 GMT -8
It definitely looks like he wasn't feeling well in that video but it's good that he's better now. Did Avon look similar when he was ill?
Have they eaten anything new recently?
It's strange they were both ill and recovered. I do wonder whether the findings on Avon's x-ray could have been incidental (not the cause of his symptoms)? Maybe gallstones are much more common in gerbils than we think.
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Post by Markpd on Dec 16, 2022 15:56:05 GMT -8
Avon looked somewhat like that after he'd recovered a bit, but before he was much more sluggish and wobbly. I was wondering about their food too, but I don't think they've eaten anything new recently, and they eat the same thing on each day. Also they're illnesses were a couple of weeks apart, so I couldn't see how it could be a common thing they'd eaten to cause that. All very odd...
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