Small raw spot from chewing?

[Karlie's Crew]

I just caught him chewing at it. He has been doing this for at least several months, but it was an “every now and then” thing, and not quite serious. I just got Guinea Pigs recently, and I feel like he might have noticed them and depression could have caused him to start again. He used to just chew the fur down to his skin, but that was it. For around 2 days now, he has chewed a bit more fur down (only about the size of a dime), but now its RAW skin, and by the looks of it, he must have been chewing his skin too. I just started thinking about taking him to the vet, but I wanted to know if there’s any suggestions or things that I could do first, by myself. I tried to upload a picture with this post, but said that the file type wasn’t aloud… Please help me

[LBJ10]

Hmm, is it just in this one spot?

What format was the picture in? I imagine regular picture files work just fine (jpg, bmp, png, etc.).

[Karlie's Crew]

It is in one spot, under his chin/on his neck. And im not sure what the file is, it’s a picture off my iphone.

[Bam]

Could you upload the pic to Photobucket or some other external source, then link to it? Uploading pics directly from an IPhone won’t work currently.

[Karlie's Crew]

Thank you, I wasn’t having the best of luck, putting it on photobucket either. Here’s a link to an instagram post of it. https://instagram.com/p/_1Ub-6CdRV/

[Karlie's Crew]

Here’s a link to the picture: https://instagram.com/p/_1Ub-6CdRV/

[Bam]

It’s difficult to see on the picture. If he’s obsessively chewing at himself (self-mutilation) I’d suspect severe stress like pain or perhaps loneliness and/or deep boredom. It doesn’t have to be pain where he chews, it could be pain in his teeth or somewhere else.

I’d take him to a vet, see if you can get his molars checked (sometimes there are big spurs that can be seen with an otoscope), a pain-killer (metacam is widely used with bunnies), some antibiotic ointment for his sore and an E-collar so he can’t reach to chew at his sore.

The only thing you could try yourself would probably be an E-collar and some neosporin cream (plain, without added painkiller). But something is off and it needs looking into, animals don’t self-mutilate just for the heck of it. Is he alone a lot? Is he bored?

[guineapig724]

Bobbi did this too! The vet said that it was stress related, but I didn’t notice anything that could have stressed her out. Now that I think about it, it was right around the time that she lost the use of her back legs, so maybe she was in pain. Your bun could definitely be stressed out by the piggies, my pigs are kept separate from my buns as they could get sick from being around the bunnies, there is a disease that they can contract from bunnies. I’d take your bun to the vet, mine prescribed Bobbi with metronidazole(antibiotic) and feline flora(probiotic) I used benebac instead of feline flora because I didn’t want her consuming some of the ingredients that ff contains. The antibiotic and benebac worked amazingly and it cleared up in about a week. Good luck! I’m so happy that you got piggies! i love mine, even if their cage is bigger than my suv.

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