Bleeding hamster mystery

[Abatte13]

This is the first time I am asking for help on this hamster.

Here is information about my hamster -
Age: 4-5 months
Gender: Female
Species: Golden Syrian

These are the details of my hamster's ailment -
When did it start: 1 month a go

Description of ailment:
We got our hamster when she was 2-3 months old and everything was fine for 2 weeks but then I woke up one morning to find what looked like blood spatters in her cage. After examining her I couldn’t find where they could have come from but I took her to the pet shop to get her checked anyway. They said she was healthy and couldn’t see what the problem was so all was fine. However it continued to happen (sometimes only a small amount, sometimes a bigger amount) and I would always find it in the morning. Because it happens in the night I’ve never seen where the blood comes from. When we are awake and with her it doesn’t happen at all.

Since then she has been to the vet twice. The first time they confirmed that they could not see a problem and sent us on our way. The second time they gave us antibiotics which she is still on (one day left) but I still find the blood most mornings so they haven’t worked so far. We are going back to the vet tonight to get more antibiotics and an anti inflammatory to see if this helps but I am just so worried. It’s hard to not know where it comes from.

She is completely normal. She eats, drinks, comes out every night to run around, and when she goes to the toilet it all looks fine.

The only other thing I can say is that she likes to throw poos out of her cage (it has bars) and there are normally poos on the floor when there is new blood, but sometimes the blood is in other areas so I don’t know if these are actually related.

Does anyone have any idea what this could be/ have you experienced this yourself? It’s quite mind blowing that we can’t see where it comes from and I’m worried that we will try this medication and it won’t work and then the vet will say that there isn’t anything really to do for her because they don’t know what it is.

Thanks!

[Amethyst_ice]

Hello,

Are you sure it is actually blood? It's great you and the vets are on it and females can have bleeding but you would usually see some dried on them.

Can I suggest you put some shredded white toilet paper in her cage in place of her substrate for a day and that way you may see a pattern and be able to take it to the vets and show us.

Good luck and hopefully this will be resolved soon
x

[Abatte13]

Thank you for your reply. The only place we have seen blood is on her nose (the slits below but not the nostrils). It happened a few weeks a go and hasn’t since until yesterday morning so we took a photo and sent it to the vet to look at. They thought it might be a respiratory infection hence the antibiotics.

Thank you for the suggestion. We will try it tonight. We assumed it was blood because it’s brown when dry and I’m not really sure what else it could be. Will try and post some photos.

[Abatte13]

Hello,

I followed your advice and managed to get a picture of the tissue and also a picture of Annabel's bloody nose. Not sure if the two are related but it's the only place we have seen what looks like blood so we are assuming so.

Hope these images help!

[cypher]

I was wondering if she's a bar chewer or chews anything else on or in the cage that might be injuring her nose?

[Abatte13]

I’ve never seen her chew her bars, but she likes to throw her poo out of the cage, which I assume she does by pushing her face up to the bars (it’s not something I’ve seen her do myself but there is always poo on the floor in the morning).

Also the blood is normally in one spot (the corner she throws the poo from) but is spread around sometimes which I guess could be when she moves after throwing the poo. I really hope this is it because it seems like a simple fix compared to any health problems! I’ll bring it up with the vet and maybe try to do something that stops her throwing the poo.

[cypher]

I hope it's something as simple as that too, it makes more sense as she seems well in herself, with a respiratory problem or other health issue I would have expected her to be showing other signs.

[Pebbles82]

If you can't work out what is causing it, it sounds like you maybe need to see a different vet. My first thought was bleeding feet after running on a wheel (this has happened with some wheels, especially wood ones) but you'd probably have seen it on the wheel. Then you mentioned her bleeding nose, and like Cypher says it may be bar chewing - but usually then they get cuts on the side of their nose whereas Annie actually seems to have it round her nostrils, which does seem like some kind of nosebleed or something.

What's strange is that it only seems to happen at night (when she's active) which does suggest some kind of activity. She'd be asleep during the day but if it was a medical issue I'd have thought it would happen at any time.

Is it only ever in the morning you see it then it does sound activity related. What substrate do you use? Just wondering if she's been digging tunnels and the substrate is sharp or splintery? (eg aspen).

Can only suggest, if you have one of those security cameras or some kind of timelapse programme for a camera or laptop, you leave it running all night and see what she does.

I know this is serious, but had to have a laugh at the title of the thread! It sounds like a murder mystery

Have you got a photo of your cage set up and see if we can spot something. I noticed you've got hay - that can be scratchy - or maybe she's allergic (although then she'd probably be sneezing and scratching). Another thought - is there any height she can fall from? A fall might cause a nose bleed.

[Abatte13]

Ok we are pretty confident that it’s from throwing poos because I was sweeping up some poos today and noticed blood spots on the floor and also on the section of the table directly underneath her poo flinging spot.

Last night we put tissue on the outside of her cage to see if there would be blood on it from her brushing her nose against it as she flung her poo. This morning there was only a small dot of blood on the tissue but a larger amount on the floor/ table so I don’t think it was from sneezing otherwise I’d expect more on the tissue. There was a gap underneath the tissue she could throw the poo from which I think is what she did, hence only a small amount of blood on the tissue.

We are going to try a few more things but can anyone suggest how we prevent this from happening? My partner wants to bend the bars a bit in that corner to give her more space so she won’t irritate her nose however I want to maybe cover tat area with something see through so she stops throwing the poo. Any other ideas would be great because we can’t seem to agree!

We are still carrying on with the medicine prescribed just in case and will keep the vet updated too.

[Pebbles82]

So you think it's the bars on her nose and not blood from the poos?