Help needed with fur loss
We have a four and half year old fox squirrel. She lives with us partly inside and partly outside in a very large habitat we built for her. Once we built the habitat she started losing fur on her belly. (See photos.).
At first the vet thought it could be mites. She was treated for mites and mange. This didn’t stop the hair loss. He treated her then for parasites. This didn’t stop the hair loss.
So the hair loss is still happening and growing into her mid section almost on her chest. After seeing posts here we thought maybe it’s her diet. She gets a diet consisting of wild berries, leaves, oranges and seeds from the trees around our property - red berries, olive seeds, ficus tree leaves. We also give her roasted, unsalted peanuts.
But with the hair loss we thought she might not be getting enough protein. So we’ve tried rodent blocks, Henry’s blocks, and recently Squirrel Complete from Exotic Nutrition, but she will not eat any of these. We’ve ground these up and mixed them with peanut butter to see if she eat it, but no. She’s an extremely picky eater. We’ve tried giving her controlled amounts of different nuts such as walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, pistachios and pumpkin seeds - all roasted and unsalted. And now we’re looking at different recipes for Boo Balls. But again, we really don’t think she’ll eat them.
But we are also concerned about some of the trees we have in her habitat. She’s got a pine tree, a Mexican guava, an orange tree and a Yucca tree. None of the wild squirrels around our property are exhibiting this hair loss, and they also don’t have access to the orange tree, the Mexican guava or the Yucca. She spends sometimes hours sitting in the Yucca tree, and the guava tree. We’ve read that Yucca trees are toxic for animals. We don’t think she’s eating anything from the Yucca tree, just spending many hours resting on the flap top of a trunk of the tree which was cut off years ago.
Any thoughts or suggestions would be so much appreciated. We are very concerned.
(Not sure if the photos uploaded correctly.)
Thanks all for your time and expertise.