Re: Metabolic Bone Disease symptoms
Here's an even better link about the therapy used for MBD in squirrels by vets:
http://www.squirrelrehabilitation.com/hupocalcemia.htm
This article says that the 23.2mg* of elemental calcium per kilogram of body weight I mentioned in my earlier post should be administered 3-4 times daily (instead of the twice daily rate I mentioned).
I've seen other articles that suggest much higher dosages (like an entire 600mg crushed antacid tablet), but I'm skeptical this would be helpful since there is a limit to how much calcium a small animal can absorb via digestion in a single day.
I'd point out that a 600mg antacid contains 240mg of elemental (pure) calcium, so for an average 500g adult squirrel, this would be an equivalent dose of 480mg/kg which is 20x the dose recommended in the article (and the article cites the Merck Veterinary Manual, 10th edition as the source of the 23.2mg/kg dosage recommendation).
Also, hitting a small animal with all of the refined sugar in even a single human antacid tablet could induce a serious blood sugar spike that wouldn't help matters.
Of all of the methods I've heard of, I'm partial to feeding carefully measured doses of the 'medicated' peanut butter I describe in my earlier post. True you need a milligram scale to mix and administer it, but it's concentrated enough so that the animal doesn't need to eat much of it to be effective and it can be administered in very precise doses in line with actual vet recommendations that avoid potential problems with calcium overdoses.
*Note: The article says "2.5ml of 10% calcium gluconate per kg of body weight". According to the calcium calculator at http://www-users.med.cornell.edu/~sp...alc/cacalc.htm , this contains 23.2mg of elemental calcium)
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