I recently purchased a huge double macaw cage second hand which is now named Cagezilla. It was such a good deal that I figured I would see how it worked out for my possums. It has a removable partition in the middle which allows me to socialize the possums for mating or to keep them separate and safe while still having the other nearby within view and smell. It took me many hours of spray washing, scrubbing, sanitizing, cleaning, scrubbing, spray washing to get the thing clean. Someone had kept large birds in it and never cleaned it, AND THEN they kept monkeys in it. Filthy doesnt describe the mess that came off of this thing. And to boot, I found a dead and dessicated mouse in it as well. No kidding.






In the photos you can see a size comparison between Cagezilla and the Exel cage that I have the sugars in. Cagezilla is the size of about five Exel tower cages.

The possums now have a LOT more room to move around and I need to find some large branches and such to fill it out with for climbing. The only thing I would change now is that the 1" bar spacing is just too big. They cant escape, but you can easily see that it is harder for them to move around on the floor grate. So some busy climbing limbs will be very welcome.

A night or two ago I was up around 1:00am or such and noticed a lot of barking coming from the office. I went to check it out figuring that all of the cages were barking at each other and that was not the case. Three sugars from the Sugar Shack colony were packed into a single exercise wheel and were singing together. It was the oddest thing to see and rather unexpected. Watching them bark randomly together it almost appeared as if I was watching a whac-a-mole game in operation.



So far I have yet to ever see a pattern from who barks, when they bark and how they bark. It truly does appear random. Some times some cages bark and some times some cages dont. There really does not seem to be a main barking cage or any specific members that bark.

Robin's suture area on her chest appears to be healing well. It is clean and dry with nothing to report. She weighed in at 1.54 pounds which means she is holding her weight now. Her antibiotics are being sprinkled on her food now and we havent done any syringe feedings or meds in many days.

Phil has been nippy lately and we all know that I love a good handling challenge. I was working with him today while wearing gloves. I figure that the more I handle him the more he will get used to it and become tame. At some point I took him outside and while I was holding him I swear that he looked up at the treetops above and began to cry. It was probably just the cool dry wind causing it, but for a moment it really seemed that he remembered trees and freedom and shed tears over it.

After this event, he got fussy and/or something startled him and he bit me. Not expecting this, my default reaction was to yank my hand away from his mouth. In doing so, I ended up hurting him pretty bad. Apparently his k9 tooth was caught in the glove and when I yanked away, it came along for the ride. The end result was a gory snap, a very bloody mouth with a k9 pointing horizontal, a big mess and a very mean possum that I now had to deal with. I rushed him to the vet and it is good that I did. His tooth did not come out, it was still firmly embedded in his jaw. My fear was that I broke his jaw and it turned out that one side was fractured enough that it turned the tooth and the jaw sideways.

The vet was able to reset the bone and said that it was a good thing that it was only a fracture and not a complete break. Because of this we were able to avoid having the jaw wired and the tooth should survive the healing intact.

Vet told me to add calcium to the diet because it appears as if he has brittle bones. So because of this, I have decided to lessen up on taming Phil and just get everyone healthy so we can try to mate. If it comes to be, I will work hard to tame the offspring and not worry so much about the parents.

I feel really bad about what happened with Phil and I guess all I can do is keep it as a lesson learned in going forward. Not all exotics are destined to be kept as pets.

My goal is to learn as much as possible about the South American Four Eyed Philander Possum and to determine if it is capable and worthy of being kept as an exotic pet.

When I was given the Sugar Shack colony, two females were pregnant. The offspring were two females and two males. Here it is four months later and we finally got the last two baby boys neutered yesterday. I now have no intact males.

This makes 8 of my neuterings that were done by the folks at Animal Clinic of Farmers Branch, 14021 Denton Dr, Dallas, TX 75234, 972-247-2221. The neuters were $55 each, and as usual, they left the testicle sack intact which I very much like as it is easy to tell who is a male and the recovery seems simple and easy.

I kept each boy separate and left them in their collars until late in the evening. Once out of their collars they immediately go to messing with their surgery area by pulling, biting and such, but in the end, it turns into simple grooming and then they tire and fall asleep. I left the overhead light on all night again to keep them docile and sleeping and this morning I put them back in with the colony and all seems well.

Robin spent today at the vet again to get her final surgery. The surgery site was closed tight and looks so much better than it did a few days ago. The scar will go across all of her chest. The infection is gone, no puss or smell and she is as perky as a possum. I'll be keeping her on antibiotics for a week and we will try to get some better foods into her in this time.

She came to me weighing 2.2 lbs and three weeks later she now weighs 1.6 lbs. I still believe that she can lose a little more weight so we'll be designing her diet to that effect once she is healed and active; 1.6 could be a steady weight for her though. We do need to burn a little more fat from the tail and see how that changes things.

Her pouch is under my thumb in the photos.






The boy's tail is rather chapped due to this dry cold spell we are having here. I have read that below 40% humidity causes this problem and can lead to open sores on the tail. I have begun to apply petroleum jelly and may consider using a humidifier around my animals in the future. My guess is that a sealed nestbox will be a good compromise to help this issue as their own body heat and moisture will keep the nestbox rather humid while sleeping.

Well here it is 9 days after her surgery, a few additional visits to the vet, some more injections and oral antibiotics, scheduled forced feedings, ... and today Robin ate something on her own for the first time! I have noticed that she has been getting stronger and more antsy while tube feeding and today we manged to get a few syringe feedings into her when she had enough. I decided to try a quarter of hard boiled egg and SHE ATE IT! HOORAY!

I dont yet know if this means that she will eat more on her own, time will tell.

Her open chest is no longer pussing nor does it smell so I believe that the infection is under control. So perhaps Tuesday we can close her up and let her finally heal correctly.

Robin getting her bath


Robin getting dried off


Robin being force fed



And here's a photo of Phil who is waiting for Robin to get healthy.

The smell from the rotting tissue has gotten worse so I took her back today to see the vet who did the surgery. All along the scar was infected and covered rather profusely in puss. When there is an infection present, you cannot seal up or remove necrotic tissue, so you have to clear up the infection first. So she got a shot of Baytril and is now on an even stronger oral antibiotic powder called Tylosin. I asked them to clean the puss from her wounds and the smell is much better for now. I am going to try to bathe her once a day in an epsom salt solution myself.

Since she will not eat, we are feeding her by syringe a mixture of items including puppy milk replacer, Nutri-Cal , Carnivore Care, Ensure and anything else that I can get down her throat. She is with energy now, climbing her cage walls and such, so I hope all of this will enable her to heal.

I am using an old canvas purse as her sleeping area/pouch and I am using paper towels to soak up any puss and blood that seeps out.

My four eyed opossum Robin is having a bad week. Since her surgery a week ago, she has eaten nothing. She has been drinking but eating absolutely nothing. I took her back to the vet and it turns out that her surgical site is infected and smells horribly, so we came home with one oral antibiotic; a suspension of SMZ, whatever that is, to be given twice daily. I do not yet have instructions to bathe the smelly wound or anything additional like that. We were able to force feed her some puppy milk replacer before we went to the vet and we gave her some more afterwards along with the antibiotic. I also have some vanilla ensure I am going to try and we are trying to locate something called Nutripet or Nutrigel which is a gel form nutrient and energy supplement that you can force into their mouth and it wont spill out.

I weighed Robin today. She was originally at 2.something pounds and is now weighing in at 1.88. So her surgery removed some of that worthless fat; hooray! More to go.

   

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kazko
Gender: Male
Occupation:computer geek
Member since: Jan 24, 1997
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My Bio
NUTHOUSE (3) Pican 4/30/2002, died 6/02/2010 Buddy 5/01/2006 Hazel 2/01/2007, rehomed 11/28/2011 Maya 4/25/2007 Pili 4/25/2007 MISFITS (3) Big Guy 9/23/2003, died 1/29/2014 Lil Guy 9/23/2003, died 5/13/2015 Hunter 4/19/2006, died 3/23/2014 JP 8/12/2006 Shikoni 2004 Kioko 2003 Washi 2003, died 5/27/2014 SUGARSHACK (3) Chico 1/15/2006, died 9/14/2011 Cookie 10/15/2005 Kimmie 10/15/2005 Lucky 5/25/2007 Spritz 8/24/2007, died 7/06/2011 Ginger 8/24/2007, died 12/16/2012 Rock 9/09/2007, died 3/23/2013 Crystal 9/09/2007, died 11/01/2012

   

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