Advice ,green slimy droppings in feeding station

[1peanutbutter]

I have several hogs visit ,clean dishes and water dishes very day,
Today there was some slimy poop there,
Could it be lung worm , is there any way you can treat this in the food ? i know it would be hard to get dosage right but as there are a few hogs not sure how i can help them.Thanks

[stef]

No you cannot mass worm.
You need to find the culprit so keep an eye out on the general population visiting and see if one appears ill
However, hogs do have a fast gut transit time and it’s not unheard of for them to occasionally pass a green poo. However if it’s regular then the hog is ill
Also bright green shiny/slimy if most likely to be a poorly hog

[5sandown]

Green slimy poo can be a sign of fluke, which we are seeing a lot of in Warwickshire at the moment. This requires quick medical treatment at a rescue centre or vet as it can result in rapid weight loss. The treatment is straightforward and can be administered quickly by a drop of medication on their skin. Good luck!

[1peanutbutter]

Thanks for the replies, not sure what i can do ,

[Hedgie Lover]

you probably do this anyway, but make sure you where surgical gloves when cleaning out your feeding station, and wash hands throughly – because if it’s internal parasites, and/or lungworm, you don’t want to get infected either – be like a doctor operating on a patient.

The hedgehog I’m looking after, who is going to be in hospital on Sunday until late spring (phew), had her poo sampled today and she’s got lungworm – it’s mushy poo but not green.

But I’m thinking, poo that doesn’t look right could very well be an internal parasite – so be extra careful, keep your stuff in the kitchen well away from the hedgehog’s stuff – even after you’ve cleaned the dishes, just to be on the safe side.

[Nic]

Hi Hedgie Lover

You should always be a bit careful with dishes, etc. anyway. Many hedgehogs have some level of lungworm without any obvious signs.

[Hedgie Lover]

Thanks Nic, to be honest, I’ve been careful but not thorough – now I am being thorough – so what I’ve said on the posts since last night – it’s stuff that I’m learning for myself, so I’m probably saying stuff that people are already doing, but for me, I’m learning this for myself.

But I’ve found looking after Sweetpea (the one with lungworm) really enjoyable – I do actually enjoy ‘mucking out’ , I’d love to volunteer and muck out in the mornings at the hedgehog hospital, but it’s a 45min drive away, and have to ask mum to drive me their as I only use public transport. So it’s not ideal, I have to win the lottery tonight, then I could get a taxi there and back each morning!

I was using a separate dish towel to dry the dishes, but just realised that I could just use kitchen roll, it would be safer that way. I never considered – when I first got the hedgehog house, and started feeding them, that I would have to treat them like a doctor would looking after patients – but that is how it’s like.

I had a house rabbit called Fudge, he had the whole house to use plus garden, (lived at mum’s then), and he slept in the same bedroom as me as rabbits are very sociable and feel more secure when their warren is around them, (he loved night times, more than day times when I was at work, due to the company), and because his main diet consisted of mostly hay, and then veg, I never wore gloves, but always washed hands before and after mucking out – but with wildlife, especially hedgehogs, it’s a totally different case.

That’s something that I should have known really, given that I’ve volunteered at an animal sanctuary (pigs, sheep, guinea pigs and rabbits). But at the animal sanctuary we were never given surgical gloves to wear.

For my hedgehogs I’ve always put gardening gloves on to put their food dishes out and bring them back in, and use rubber gloves when I’m cleaning out the feeding station (I’ll still continue to use rubber gloves as I’d get burnt from the water eitherwise).

But with gardening gloves, mine have fabric on the top of them, and so they aren’t as hygienic as they could be, so now I’m only gonna use gardening gloves if I have to weigh them, and now I’m using small animal disinfectant, cleaning with kitchen roll after I’ve picked them up, because surgical gloves are much better.

I’ve also ordered two more kidney shaped Riverside hedgehog water bowls from Amazon, so what I’m gonna start doing, (each day I’ve been washing their bowls in hot water with washing up liquid), but now I’m gonna start putting a puppy mat down in the feeding station, dispose of it each morning and wash down with boiling water, and then replace the two feeding bowls (one water, one for food), with the new ones, and fill the kitchen sink with boiling water from the kettle and leave the dirty bowls to steralise for a few hours, then wash them as I would normally, and then dry with kitchen roll.

I’m sorry if I’m preaching to the converted, it just that I wasn’t one of the converted ones, I’m clean, but not as thorough as I could be – it starts now, and I’m just writing on here, the advice I’m giving myself. I don’t mean to be patronising!

[Hedgie Lover]

I can’t help feeling, as I’ve been careful, but not as careful as I am being now – I can’t help feeling that I might have caused the hedgehogs to have lungworm and the internal parasites – I feel I might have contributed by not steralising their bowls everyday, only washing them in hot water, but not boiling. I pick up poo each time I see it in the feeding station, and wash the surface with hot water with kitchen roll, and I have been giving it a proper clean out with boiling water each week (all of it, all the sides and outside), but I think I should of been doing that daily, or at least just the surface they walk on.

So I’m enjoying looking after Sweetpea, and feel happier that I’m learning these lessons now – but I feel guilty that I could have contributed in some way by not being as thorough as I should have been.

[Nic]

Don’t worry too much Hedgie Lover, I don’t imagine many people are being as thorough as you are!

It’s normal for hogs to have parasites, so whilst it’s good to keep it a clean round feeding areas (especially if you have multiple hogs visiting), they probably pick them up elsewhere, anyway. But giving feeding boxes a good clean out helps to keep tick/flea eggs away, too.

[Hedgie Lover]

Thanks Nic, I haven’t been thorough, but I will be now.

Sweetpea’s food bowl is currently soaking in boiling water – I did soak it first in hot tap water and sprayed cage disinfectant in the water, now it’s soaking in boiling water, then in the evening I’ll wash it again in hot soapy water, make sure there is no cage disinfectant on it – I does say on the bottle to use it to disinfect food bowls, but to thoroughly wash afterwards.

The disinfectant is ace, I love it – I’m using it on kitchen surfaces and kitchen sink as well. As well as spraying it on the garden gloves after I’ve picked her up. I’m not using it in the cage at the moment, I’ll wait til so goes to the hospital, then I’ll disinfect with the spray and wash it with boiling water.

I got a medium sized hamster cage, which only has cage bars on the lid for the entrance, the rest of it is pastic (blue base and clear plastic for the big lid).

And it’s good as it means I can clean it properly and use it again for another hog when needed.

Cardboard boxes, poo must get smeared all over it if they’ve got mushy poo.

Puppy mats are brilliant in the cage, soak up the wee and split water easily – and so easy to keep the cage clean. This morning I found that Sweetpea had dragged one half of the puppy mat out underneath her little box (where she sleeps) and it was quite mucky, so I wonder if she was trying to do some cleaning?

Other than that, she leaves the puppy mat where it is, but sometimes she does try to look underneath it in the hope that she can find more food.

I’ve found with newspaper, they like shredding it up, but with puppy mats, Sweetpea doesn’t do that, so hopefully the puppy mat will be a success in the feeding station, fingers crossed, because that will save me a lot of worry.

[Hedgie Lover]

puppy mat was a success in the feeding station, it stayed in place, and hogs must have come to visit, as no spikes in the bowl, just a layer of cat biscuits – but no poos last night in there, so I didn’t need to change it.

Must feel a bit nicer on their feet, as it’s nice and soft, rather than plastic. So if they don’t poo on it and no wees, I won’t have to change it every day, so a bag of them might last me a while.

Initially, when I first put the feeding station down, I put newspaper in there, but they’d always rip it up and shred it so wasn’t any good.

[Hedgie Lover]

sorry for the alarmist response I gave the other day – the hospital told me we can’t catch lungworm from hedgehogs – we could catch other stuff, but is treatable anyway. So hope I didn’t make anyone panic so much, and put new people to feeding hedgehogs off from feeding them.

[stef]

Hi
Hedgehogs carry internal parasites as a norm. They pick them up from the food that they eat normally.
They can cope perfectly well with them, unless they become ill in which case the balance can go out of sync. This can also be caused by stress of captivity.
It is often the reason a hog comes in looking apparently well and people think it’s ok to keep them and then they become ill after a short period and die. For this reason ALL hogs brought in for overwintering should be checked over by a carer and monitored regularly.
If you keep hogs together and one has a parasite load then you always need to treat both.

Hedgehogs carry zoonotic diseases that we can catch, however you only need normal basic hygiene in place. You do not need to go overboard sterilising equipment etc ( unless dealing with tiny hoglets )
It makes sense not to cross contaminate animal and human food dishes as a norm

[Hedgie Lover]

Yes, I’ve come to realise the importance of poo sampling.

If the rescue centres can’t do anything as they are full, a vet might be able to do the poo sample.

I’m not sure about this, my mum was going to ask her vet if they would do this in the future if need be and for what cost, but as I’ll be volunteering soon at a rescue centre, so I can take in poo samples in myself if need be next autumn.

With the food bowls, I’ve been washing them everyday, but I’ve ordered two more – so each morning I can swap them, then bring the dirty bowls in and drop them in two plastic ice cream boxes and put water from the kettle, then wash them later on as I would normally and leave to dry.

I probably don’t need to go to this extent, but it won’t put me out to do this, so might as well. I always have the kettle on anyway, as I’m a total caffeine addict, so it’s not an additional burden for me. I’m not going to the extent of buying sterilising tablets, or properly sterilizing them in a pan like you would jam jars.

[stef]

If your vet won’t do the samples, you can ask your nearest carer if they do them. Alternatively you can send them to Vale Wildlife hospital – I believe they charge £5 per sample now

[Author]

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