[heavenlyhogs]

I need some adivise please..I just heard this minute by email that one of my hoglets owners has discovered and confirmed the hoglet has ringworm.
Myself and none of my other animals have this as far as i'm aware but i have been told the symptoms are not always apparent and that i should take some of my hedgies to the vet to check them out.
How the **** would they have contracted this if they have?my hygeine is spot on i use a dilute solution of bleach weekly to wash the cages and accessories ect,i was told my persian cat may be a carrier with no outward signs.I feel absolutely awful about this and am very worried for my animals.As i have said me and my children had had no signs of the illness at all.
I feel as a breeder it is my responsibility to get to the bottom of this and take care of owners veterinary fees should the illness have originated from here for what ever reason.I had infected eczema not so long ago could the animals have picked up ringworm from this from me?
I have decided however that NO hoglet will leave my premises in future without a full veterinary check.

 

[PixiesExoticHedgies]

First of all.....how long has the hoglet been AWAY from YOUR house?

Ringworm is viral, and can be picked up anywhere from anyone at anytime. Do a quick GOOGLE search, b/c if I'm not mistaken it has a 7 - 10 day incubation time, and then symptoms show up. It's quite common with school aged kids. Does the new family have school aged kids? Ringworm is also contageous. So anyone that has handle the hedgie, would also need to keep an eye out for symptoms.

Personally, I've never heard or read about a case of ringworm in hedgies.
But then again, GOOGLE is a great place to start looking.

 

[heavenlyhogs]

The hoglet in paticular was homed over a month ago and as i have said i have checked all my pets from nose to tail aswell as the children and have found nothing.
Yes the people who homed the boy have a school going grand daughter and 2 dogs.
I will seek advise from my vet but would like to know everyones opinions on what they would do in this situation.If the responsibility of the vet fees lies with me the breeder?

 

[heavenlyhogs]

Re: How did this happen?

He was rehomed just over a month ago

 

[Nancy]

Yes there have been cases of ringworm in AP hedgehogs but it isn't that common. Usually it is difficult to tell for a while too because of the quills. How did they discover it? Not all ringworm glows and if it didn't they would have had to do skin scrapings which to do that there would have had to have been obvious symptoms. Unless you are going to do a full vet check with skin scrappings and blood work, you are not possibly going to catch everything.

Ringworm is contagious and can be airborne but my daughter works in a pet store and on occasion they have gotten guinea pigs in with ringworm but it has never passed to anything else. It is VERY common in guinea pigs so if you have guinea pigs or have been in contact with gp's, its a good chance that's where it came from.

Most importantly, DO NOT use tea tree or anything containing tea tree on the hedgehog. It is toxic and can cause renal failure in our guys. Tea tree is commonly used on the European hedgehogs as a treatment for ringworm with seemingly no ill effects but it will kill our guys.

 

[bryan]

Given that ringworm has an incubation period of between 4 and 14 days depending on the species of ringworm involved the chances it came from your herd after a little over a month is doubtful. Ringworm is highly contagious and can be transmitted by a wide number of sources, including the family dogs and school-age children. It happens. It is not due necessarily to poor hygiene or poor husbandry practices. If you have nothing in your own herd to indicate the presence of ringworm, I would be cautiously optimistic. Keep a vigilant watch for any signs of infection, but treatment without cause is not the answer, either.

Bryan

 

[heavenlyhogs]

Thanks to everyone that posted with advise.I shall be monitoring the situation very closely.
I have been up almost a straight 24 hrs with worry but will do my best to get some sleep tonight.
Thanks again

 

[heavenlyhogs]

How did they discover it?

The lady herself contracted ringworm and took the hoglet to the vet who says he was more than likely born with it??????????????????
It took a few days to confirm but it was confirmed under woods method lighting.

 

[Nancy]

If the baby had been born with it, the whole litter and mom would have shown major symptoms long before now. Can they even be born with it? I'm betting baby would have to contract it from mom.

It if fluoresced on that baby, if your's have it, they will fluoresce too so try using a black light and see if they glow. If one baby contracted it at your place, then I'm sure more would have it.

 

[Ian And Julie]

Hi all,
My wife Julie and I are the owners of the young male hoglet who now has confirmed Ringworm.

Firstly let me clear up a point. We are in no way trying to lay blame for this on the breeder.
It's happened that's all there is to it, we need to cure Leo and my wife as soon as we can and move on. We merely informed the breeder so she could have her breeding herd checked just in case. We have asked for no vets fees or treatment costs to be reimbursed at all. I take it as responsible pet owners we all want to learn more about our pets and their parasites. Well chaps this is learning.

We purchased Leo 4 weeks ago. For the first 3 or 4 days we didn't handle him, allowing him to settle into his new home and surroundings. My wife then started handling him and he loved to nuzzle his way under her blouse and go to sleep on her left shoulder. Two weeks later she began to get a severe itch there, a day later a red ring developed about the size of a 10 pence piece. I urged her to go to the doctor and after her second visit he confirmed Ringworm. She is now undergoing a lengthy treatment with Terbinafine Hydrocloride cream to rid herself of the fungal infection. Apparently there is no quick and easy fix for this infection.

We then looked around for a vet who knew African Pygmy hedgehogs and found one in Liverpool who specialised in Exotics. He first looked at my wife's symptoms then gloved up and examined Leo in a darkened room under UV light. He said any signs of the fungal infection would basically glow or fluress green. His ears, the back of his head and his back were all covered. The only true way to 100% identify it would be to take a skin scrape but this is not possible in a young hog. But he said with 99% certainty due to my wife's condition that his diagnosis is correct.

He also took a stool sample to send away for further examination to check for any internal parasites. We are still awaiting the results.

To look at him he is perfectly fit and well, he shows no visible signs or symptoms of the fungus, although he is always scratching, but we put this down to the fact that he may have started quilling. If my wife had not caught it we would not suspect anything was wrong with the little happy chap.

Now to put the timeframe into perspective as some posters on here have said we have had him far to long and the infection must have come from my daughter as she is of school age.
The problem began to show itself approx 14 days after we began handling him. It took a further week or so before Ringworm was confirmed in my wife and Leo, bringing us up to the 4 weeks since he came home.

The treatment for Leo is Itrafungol an oral solution. We have to syringe feed him with this every day for a week, then a week off then a week of treatment again for 5 consecutive weeks.

We had spent a small fortune on a beautiful house for him and a tunnel and loads of toys to keep him amused and interested. All these as they are natural fibres need to be burned. He is now in a horrible plastic igloo with paper on his cage floor so we can disinfect it daily until he is cured. The carpets and rugs in our house where he has walked need to be sprayed weekly with a fungicide. We can only handle him until he is cured with surgical gloves which then need to be destroyed. A dilute bleach wash we have been told will do nothing to the fungus it needs a correct fungicidal wash in our case F10SC which is a specialist veterinary disinfectant used to kill the most resistant viruses, fungi, yeasts and bacteria such as PBFD and Parvovirus.

Having found out how serious and contagious this problem is we feel it's our duty to pass on our experiences, and not to lay any blame.

To clear another point up The vet said he most likely was born with it, what he meant to say was he most likly caught it at birth.

If anyone wishes to contact us re this matter or to see a photograph of the infection please feel free to email us at [email protected].
Julie & Ian

 

[heavenlyhogs]

Thanks iain & Julie glad you made it here,now people have a bit more information on the circumstances they can post their comments and views.

 

[heavenlyhogs]

Thanks Iain and julies.
Would like to point out Leo himself has NO VISIBLE signs of ringworm and many fungus's that can glow under the light are not all ringworm.
Views please?

 

[heavenlyhogs]

A couple of things that strike me as strange is that one of my hoglets from the same litter had a skin scrape a 4 weeks old to check for literally everything,would such an infection not be spotted?
Also NONE of my hedgies to now have shown any signs of the infection and from what i understand from ringworm once it has a host it is activated?
The symptoms julie shows are visible and more advanced than leos?is that an indication that she may have had it first?possibly from her dogs?
It's clear i need to have my animals tested and treated but could be this infection was brought into rather than left my home.It might be useful to identify the species .
I'm no expert here but seems to me too many things just don't add up.

 

[Nancy]

I know of a case of ringworm that definitely came from the hedgehog and it showed up on the person long before there was anything visible on the hedgehog. If I remember correctly it took a couple of months and even then, all the hedgehog showed was dry skin and itchiness. Interestingly, in this case, the ringworm was severe on the wife but nothing on the husband who handled the hedgehog equally as much.

Heavenly, why did you have a skin scrape done on a 4 week old baby unless there were signs of a problem? A skin scrape is not something to randomly subject a baby to without good reason. Unless they looked specifically for ringworm on the skin scrape, it wouldn't show up.

You may never know where the ringworm came from or which household it started in but the fact that one baby needed a skin scrape at 4 weeks makes me suspect that possibly that baby was showing symptoms that weren't picked up at that time.

 

[heavenlyhogs]

The baby had a skin infection which he was given antibiotics for,he was the only one in the litter effected.
thanks for your input nancy.

 

[heavenlyhogs]

Must also point out i have a dog and 2 cats as well as 1 school going child.

 

[Nancy]

The baby had a skin infection which he was given antibiotics for,he was the only one in the litter effected.
thanks for your input nancy.

Ah, Was it staph? I've had two litters with one baby with staph and they were the only one in the litter with it. My vet said it was because on occasion one baby will have a lower immune system than the others so they get it and the others don't.

I was just reading about ringworm http://www.ringworm.com.au/ It says cats are the prime source of it. Odd, I've always heard it was guinea pigs.

 

[heavenlyhogs]

Yes nancy i believe it was as the vet said he had a lower immune system also.I posted here about it not so long ago and queried the vets temperature recommendations for the babies.
Iain and julie were telling me that Persian cats(which i have)are a major carrier of the infection.
If this is indeed the case i need to find a solution.

 

[heavenlyhogs]

The cats are wormed regularly using drontal but i don't recall if it covers ringworm.
My cat is 7 and i've never expirienced this problem before.My persian is also a longhaired which are more prone to the problem re occuring.

 

[heavenlyhogs]

I'm really hoping that this wouldn't end in me having to rehome my cat "Bear",we've had him so long now.But i will do anything to ensure the health of my hogs and if that's what it would take then so be it.I need to discuss preventative methods first with my vet due to such a high risk of reinfection.