Concerned about "scabbing"

[Thumper33]

Baby is ~4 weeks old and I've been calling her Pinky. She has developed what would call scabbing on her left hand. My thought is to put some tripple antibiotic on it. I don't know if that's bad for an animal since she might lick it off.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-gzIBaW8_2rw/UCG7lLXWflI/AAAAAAAACJg/I8BxbEg556A/s720/P38794300.jpg


Oh.. and now that I have some pictures uploaded... here she is... :D

when I found her...

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-F0uOjVKGM44/UCGrHG0Q5mI/AAAAAAAACHU/u5FWS6C6wyU/s720/P38260600.jpg

most recent good picture... a few days ago I think. Batteries on my camera died or I'd upload a fresh picture.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-hBPr4b57ErE/UCGsjqHeG6I/AAAAAAAACJA/BuF6yd7ZqXg/s720/P38388605.jpg

[pappy1264]

Is her heat too hot? Did she get a burn on her foot? It looks like a sort of raised scaley thing. Is it only on that one foot?

[Chickenlegs]

She's beautiful and about the size of my Dusty Rose. Her little hand looks kinda swollen. Is it? Could it be some sort of insect bite? She's so tiny I wouldn't worry about her doing much licking. Would cortisone cream help swelling?

[Thumper33]

As far as I know her heat has not gotten too hot. I really don't know what would have caused it unless the esbilac she WAS on gave her a nutritional problem. I'm now feeding Fox Valley at 3:1 water to continue to help with dehydration.

She doesn't seem to mind her hands, although it looks to me like it should be painful apparently it isn't. I just want to do whatever I can.

Since I haven't heard back from anyone saying not to, I'm going to treat it like I would my own hands and put some tripple antibiotic on it.

Cortozone cream as far as I'm aware is largely for itching. The creme probably hydrates, but cortozone is an anti-itch. (Pretty sure)

[Anne]

Go ahead and use the triple antibiotic creme, it will help hydrate and soften the scales. Could be from a list of causes. Glad she is on Fox Valley now-that's one worry we don't have to fight.

[Chickenlegs]

I was less concerned with itch than swelling IF her sweet little hand is actually swollen--and in a pix can't really tell. I guess I was more asking the pros. I hope your sweetie is doing better today.

[virginia_arce2280]

Hi,
I'm a few days late on this one and wanted to share my experience. I have a 5 and 1/2 week old squirrel, female, and at around 2 1/2 weeks she started to developed big thick scabs on her fingers and very swollen. Her hand got so swollen that it was the size of a marble and I was afraid it was going to fall off. I tried everything from coconut oil, to triple antibiotic ointment, and hydrocortisone cream and it only seemed to get worse. But it only stayed on the hand and did not spread. Then I got the idea to wash her hand in warm soapy water, pour hydrogen peroxide on it (it was also very raw looking where there were no scabs and bubbled profusely), dry it and put a mixture of food grade diotomaceous earth
(here is a link for those who don't know what this stuff is to explain what it is: http://wolfcreekranch1.tripod.com/defaq.html/ )
mixed with water to make a paste and it dries looking like clay. I used this on myself when I had a really bad rash of poison ivy or oak and it's very drying and soothing. Within 3 days her scabs were falling off and the swelling gone down incredibly. And now she's better and the fur is slowly starting to come back. She has a naked hand right now, but that was my experience and I still have no idea what she had, but the cleaning and drying effect was what she needed and not moisturizing.
Hope that helps!:) :)

[Thumper33]

Thanks for the info :)

Thankfully, the problems are all gone now. All I did was apply bacetracin (sp?) liberally to her hand at each feeding. It seemed to immediately fix the issue and she was back to normal within two or three days.

That said, maybe our squirrels had two totally different issues, or maybe mine was just in an earlier stage which responded differently than later stages. Either way... I'm happy that neither of our squirrels are amputees. :)

Mike