Bacchus Residents

Hello again, readers, This is going to be a rather upsetting post about the tragic passing of one of our beloved resident rats - Trevor. We knew when taking on Trevor and his life-long cage-mate/sibling -Travis, that they weren't young rats. Sadly, like most smaller pets, their lifespan is only short. We were fully aware the bucks wouldn't be around for too long, but that doesn't make it any less sad when the day they have to leave you finally comes. When Trevor arrived, he was obese (nearly 1kg) and desperately needed to lose weight. We actually feared he may have been diabetic, as he was also drinking excessively - we wrote a previous post on the topic. Luckily, we did manage to get Trevor to lose weight, and after having some tests carried out, we learned that he wasn't diabetic either. Once he lost the weight we deemed "most harmful", we became less strict with his diet and allowed him to lose the final part of his weight in whatever time frame  - th...

Hello again, readers, Today we decided to discuss Nova's allergies, and how we've managed to 'deal' with them. Technically speaking, we sadly cannot cure Nova from her allergies (which seem to be dust-sensitive), but we can help alleviate some of her symptoms to improve her quality of life. So, we wanted to talk about the approach we've taken for our special little girl. Firstly, we went to the vet with both Nova and Shmi as both girls had been developing rattly breathing and excessive sneezing. Though both girls had similar symptoms - their triggers were different.  We were particularly concerned about Nova showing signs of respiration difficulties at such a young age (approx 6 months at the time) - it lead the vet to question us on a couple of factors at home. They didn't want to start pumping Nova full of antibiotics and other medications if she didn't need it - it can cause more harm than good. Firstly, the vet wanted to ensure the location and clea...

Hello again, readers, This is a sad post about the passing of our beloved gerbil - Luna. THIS POST CONTAINS UPSETTING CONTENT WHICH SOME READERS MAY FIND DISTRESSING Luna arrived to us heavily pregnant whilst already nursing two-week old pups - she had already had another previous litter prior to the litter she was nursing as well - three known  back-to-back  pregnancies in total. Luna was one of ten gerbils (Luna, Fred, George, Mike, Sirius, Lupin, Zizzi, Pickley, Johnson, and Mo) who arrived in our home - It was very apparent that all the gerbils were all heavily inbred and severely neglected - some were in shock upon their arrival. Luna successfully birthed five precious pups (three males and two females) - making it a total intake of fifteen gerbils.  Unfortunately, none of the pups from Luna's third litter made it into early adulthood all because of the physical and psychological impact of severe inbreeding.  It was clear their previous owner had no b...

Hello again, readers, THIS POST WILL CONTAIN SOME GRAPHIC POST-SURGICAL CONTENT WHICH MAY BE DISTRESSING TO SOME READERS. Today, we wanted to discuss one of the most risky surgeries we've probably ever had carried out on any of our residents - Hedwig having two masses removed. There are a multitude of reasons as to why the surgery was unbelievably risky; Hedwig is a senior Roborovski Dwarf Hamster, weighing in at only 25g, with a history of seizures.  One of the first questions people understandably ask is;  "why risk it?" .  Sometimes, cons do outweigh the pros, and in those cases, it's probably not sensible to risk it - especially when there is no prizes at the end.  In this case, we had two options: Option 1) High Risk Surgery Pros: Hedwig could go on to live another 2 years Pros: No masses Pros: Improves quality of life Cons: Potential death Cons: Major surgery Cons: Long recovery Cons: Potential secondary bacterial infection Option 2) Euthan...

Hello again, readers, We wanted to write about three 'brothers' (who were actually sisters, but we weren't aware at the time) who passed away within a close time-frame - Wayne, Wilson and Winston. We bought the three amigos from a pet shop long before we went off doing our own thing. Originally, they all lived as a trio - Wayne had other ideas. Sadly, they de-clanned resulting in a 2:1 split; Wilson and Winston remained living together, and lived happily until Wilson passed away. Wayne never found another permanent friend, but enjoyed living next to a few different gerbils throughout his life. A forewarning: throughout this post, we will be discussing topics and events that some readers may find distressing and/or upsetting. Wilson and Wayne developed internal tumours: We noticed Wayne was in a pretty bad way very late in the evening on Easter weekend, we actually thought he was dying at the time - he had a large internal mass/bloat within his abdomen. He was in a ...

Hello again, readers, We are going to do another post about a whole bunch of mini updates. Hopefully, this type of post makes it a lot easier to understand some of the 'less significant', though still relevant, updates about whatever it is that may have happened involving our residents. We know sometimes it can be quite difficult to get all of the information and points across on our Instagram - that is one of the main reasons why we started our blog. So, with that being said, we will write a fully in-depth (and hopefully easier to understand) post about some of our recent events, each event is clearly labeled, so feel free to pick and choose which sections you would prefer to read: Dave's Molar Spurs; As you've probably guessed from the subheading, Dave began suffering with molar spurs.  One morning, we noticed Dave was pawing at his mouth, and just seemed to be a bit more agitated than normal. So, we thought it would've been sensible to take him to the...

Hello again, readers, Today we wanted to write a post about a previous resident hybrid dwarf hamster - Baggins. This will be the first of multiple posts like this (until we run out of write-ups, anyway) about some of our residents who're no longer with us. We recently wrote an explanation on why we're doing posts like this. Baggins was only with us for a short amount of time, it's always deeply upsetting when that happens. We always hope our residents will be with us for a long very time, but sadly with most smaller furries, that rarely happens. When he arrived, we couldn't be certain of his age. We would've estimated him to have been over 1 years old, but how much older was never really clear to us. In his previous home, Baggins had been left with no enrichment or interaction, he was barely within the correct weight (borderline underweight), and had been living with an infected scent gland for some time. As soon as Baggins had space to run, toys to play wit...

Hello again, readers, This post is a little different, it's actually barely a post, more of an explanation.  We decided that we wanted to set ourselves a task; a task to do a write up about each of our past and current residents.  It's always been something that slightly bothered us, we really wanted all of our residents to feature on our both  Instagram , and our blog. We tend to write blog posts about ours and the residents experiences; with health complications, de-clanning, deaths and introducing new residents etc. It doesn't really seem fair to us that our older residents never got the chance to feature on our blog just because we hadn't started writing about ourselves at the time - they're all equally as important to us. We experimented a little with this on our Instagram with our 'Throwback Thursday' posts. Everyone really seems to enjoy them and we've had a really positive response from writing them. That got us thinking about setting o...

Hello again, readers, Today we wanted to do another short and sweet post introducing our beautiful little Maz.  After convincing her previous owner to part with little Maz for free, we were able to collect her from pretty horrifying conditions. Maz's coat is horrendous, she was incredibly underweight and small for her age, badly bred and living alone in terrible accommodation (a 'Pico' hamster cage). Anyway, since being here Maz has made some new friends, gained weight, her coat has improved, and she is becoming more trusting by the day. She still has a little way to go before her coat will appear much brighter but that's ok, Maz is loving it here! You can keep up with Maz on our Instagram .