In light of the recent 4+ week old pup losses by Paige and Lisa, I wanted to share some my similar experience and some pictures. In Cara's first litter one of five pups, at 3 weeks, stopped developing and got the rumpled fur with clicking. With her we did not intervene and she died at 4 weeks. Like Paige we felt very saddened and somehow responsible for the illness. In Cara's next litter, three of the five pups (the agoutis) had the same experience of an arrested development at three weeks, rumpled fur and clicking. And the two spotted pups were small. We put just these three on kitten replacement milk (KMR) 2x a day. We put the entire litter on a canary dose of Ornacycline (tetracycline). The picture at this site shows the litter at 4 weeks (one week after treatment). http://www.geocities.com/abcgerbils/weanfailur.html?966565251400 This is the point where the agoutis started getting better and the spotted pups worse. Signs of this (weaning related??) illness are rumpled/puffed up fur, eyes partly closed, eyes look dark/dry not shiny, and scrawny tail. Here we stopped the agouti's KMR and started the spots on KMR -- since they were still clicking we continued the tetracycline for everyone for a total of 14 days. One spotted pup refused milk -- sadly he died in a few days after several hours of very labored breathing. The other spotted pup accepted supplemental milk feed (we did this for a week) and he as well as all the agoutis did survive. After getting them through this two week period they all developed normally on their own into full size, healthy adults. I know that this is a long message...but the bottom line is from these two experiences, my feeling is: 1) if your litter looks like the picture, take immediate action 2) if the pups are at weaning age try both the KMR feeding and the tetracycline medicine. Donna A. http://www.geocities.com/abcgerbils/home.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ GML code reminders: :C for general care, feeding, housing, bedding, etc discussions. :B for breeding discussions that are less genetics intensive :G for long, genetics discussions of the long, "alphabet soup" type :M for meta discussion -- discussion on the group itself. :$ for selling gerbils, wanting to buy gerbils or related information. :I for this is completely irrelevant and "we're just babbling" discussions. :S for information on gatherings and shows. :Z for zoological and scientific postings that do not fit into any other category :E for this relates *only* to exotic species of gerbils
