Hello everyone,

Thank you so much for all your advice, sorry it has taken me a while to reply.

We've been monitoring Rufus closely, moved him away from Gus to stop any
spreading if it is something infectious. The two red dots have disappeared, and
looks now more like it was a scratch after all, although his skin might look a
little dry generally - although i'm not really sure what hamster skin is
supposed to look like.

To help with the hair loss, yeast tablets have been suggested to me. I work in
a health food shop, but we were all out of brewer's yeast annoyingly, so will
try again for that during the week.

We have decided to take him to the vet tomorrow though, as he hasn't seemed
quite himself this evening. He could just be a bit tired and warm with the hot
weather but he was just sitting on the arm of the chair, and not nearly as
mobile as he usually is.

I'm going to ring a local vet, about 5 minutes from where we live, first thing
tomorrow morning, and hopefully get Rufus booked in there.

I live in Canterbury, Kent, I couldn't find any specialist small animal vets in
the area. If anyone knows of any please let me know. We do have a Pets at Home
with a Companion Care vets within it though, but I am a little cautious about
going there. Has anyone had any experience with them?

Thanks again everyone,

Kat


--- In thehammyhut@yahoogroups.com, kittykat1985 <no_reply@...> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I was wondering if anyone could give me any advice. I've been looking around
on the internet but I'm now even more conflicted about what to do.
>
> I have two Syrian hamsters, one called Rufus who was the runt of the litter,
and one of his brothers called Gus, [seperate cages of course!], who are about a
year and four months old.
>
> I noticed this evening whilst playing with him that Rufus has some bald
patches, the skin looks ok, not flakey or anything, but was warmer than areas
without the bald patches, and also in one place it looked like there were two
little red dots. Although Rufus is not a 'staying still' kind of hamster so I',
not sure if maybe it was more of a scratch. I couldn't see any mites, but I
know they're not always visible.
>
> Rufus wasn't bothered about me handling him, or blowing his fur, as this was
the best way I could get a look at his skin. He's perfectly happy, racing
around in his ball, crashing into Gus as per usual.
>
> Recently he also had some eye secretion, to the point that his eye was closed
after he'd been sleeping, but we had recently purchased some different to usual
bedding, and the eye seemed to clear up no problems after reverting back to the
normal bedding. Again, during this time his character was the same, it didn't
appear to be bothering him.
>
> I wonder if the two things are related? Also what do people think I should
do? Of course if Rufus appeared to be in any distress I would take him straight
to the vet, but as he's happy, I'm a little more hesitant. This has happened
very quickly as both hamsters are handled and taken out of their cages every
day, they are cleaned out once a week, well fed [dry foods, and little bits of
fresh veg, and a little treat now and again]. Neither I nor my partner had
noticed any hair loss on Rufus until this evening.
>
> Any advice, or any idea of what exactly it might be would be hugely
appreciated. I'm just going round in circles trying to decide if it was mites,
old age, an allergy or something more serious.
>
> Thanks for taking the time to read this, let me know if there's any other info
needed.
>
> Kat
>