Neurologic squirrel

[Alexa32.]

Hello everyone,
Three nights ago, I received a juvenile grey squirrel weighing approximately 220 g. He was brought to me after someone’s son watched him fall out of a tree. He came to me very non-mobile and non-fearful of people and he did not try to get away at all. I started him on meloxicam and fluids. I noticed beside his right ear. There was some blood. I wiped up the blood and noticed too small punctures beside his year so I started him on baytril as well. The next day, he seemed a little more alert. I continued fluids and meloxicam. Yesterday he started vocalizing a lot more and would continually grunt. If there were people around or if I tried to handle him, he still seemed unsteady, but was able to walk and was circling to the left. Now today he is still grunting, constantly circling to the left and I notice he seems to lose his balance and will start rolling continually until he can catch his balance again. When I picked him up for his treatments, I also noticed some slight tremoring. In hindsight, I realize I should have started him on steroids rather than NSAIDs, but at this point, I am worried I am not doing enough to treat him or if I should be doing some thing else. And of course with having the punctures I always worry about rabies although I know squirrels are not normal vectors. My other concerns outside of head trauma were roundworms or vestibular disease . I have since stopped the meloxicam and did fluids and fed some Nutra Cal tonight and he does appear to want to eat it I think.despite wanting to bite the syringe. . Thank you in advance. Any advice is appreciated.

[CritterMom]

It may be a good idea to go ahead and switch from the meloxicam to prednisone or prednisolone. You want 24 hours from last meloxicam dose to first steroid dose. Do you have access to prednisone?

[Alexa32.]

It may be a good idea to go ahead and switch from the meloxicam to prednisone or prednisolone. You want 24 hours from last meloxicam dose to first steroid dose. Do you have access to prednisone?

Yes I do! I won’t be able to get it until tomorrow night tho. his last dose of meloxicam was last night so I’ll hold off on that tonight so he will have a 48 hour wash out period. but I can get oral or injectable. Do you know what the dose would be for that?

[CritterMom]

We have a 14 day dosing protocol built around the oral since most of the time people are using leftover meds from themselves. It is available in a ton of different milligram sizes. See what you can get.

Depending what is wrong, it can work great or not at all. If what you are seeing is caused by internal swelling caused by whatever happened to this baby that is pressing on nerves causing the symptoms, the steroids knock inflammation down really fast and can work amazingly well. If something is severed, or damaged too far to come back, of course you don't get results. In these situations I would rather try and fail than than not try at all.

[Alexa32.]

We have a 14 day dosing protocol built around the oral since most of the time people are using leftover meds from themselves. It is available in a ton of different milligram sizes. See what you can get.

Depending what is wrong, it can work great or not at all. If what you are seeing is caused by internal swelling caused by whatever happened to this baby that is pressing on nerves causing the symptoms, the steroids knock inflammation down really fast and can work amazingly well. If something is severed, or damaged too far to come back, of course you don't get results. In these situations I would rather try and fail than than not try at all.

Okay! I get the meds from work so I will double check the concentration tomorrow and go from there. I just checked on him again and it looked like he finally settled a bit and tucked himself into his blankets. I was worried he wasn’t getting much rest with all the circling and pacing he’s been doing.

[Alexa32.]

We have a 14 day dosing protocol built around the oral since most of the time people are using leftover meds from themselves. It is available in a ton of different milligram sizes. See what you can get.

Depending what is wrong, it can work great or not at all. If what you are seeing is caused by internal swelling caused by whatever happened to this baby that is pressing on nerves causing the symptoms, the steroids knock inflammation down really fast and can work amazingly well. If something is severed, or damaged too far to come back, of course you don't get results. In these situations I would rather try and fail than than not try at all.

I just checked the dose and it’s 3mg/ml oral liquid

[Spanky]

Dosing sent for 3mg/1ml prednisone...