Wednesday, April 7, 2010

No more piggy woes!

Well, Ani finished her treatment today. For a recap, she was on an antibiotic (Baytril) to treat an abscessed lymph node in her neck. This was in early February, and she finished her two months of treatment up a couple of days ago. Tonight, she had her follow-up vet appointment and the verdict was that the lumps were back to normal lymph node size and she should be good to go. There is a possibility that, after being off antibiotics for a while, they would come back and we would have to repeat this process for the rest of her life, but hopefully that won't happen.

She was very good about her treatment and was always very patient about her twice a day regimen. It also helped me come up with a better strategy for nail clippings; instead of enlisting my boyfriend to help hold them still while I did all the nails at once, I do a foot every couple of days. They're so much more relaxed that way -- even Fred, the feisty little guy that he is, is a lot more patient with this system, although he never lets me finish a whole foot and I have to do just a few nails before he freaks out.

Total, I spent $80 on vet visits, $92 on antibiotics, and $20 on probiotics, for a grand total of $192 on a guinea pig abscess that may recur, require more antibiotics, cause a resistance to the antibiotics which can cause a whole host of new problems, and eventually require expensive, invasive surgery. Fingers crossed that the whole episode ends today and no more problems develop.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Seedling woes....

Well, after a week or so of healthy growth, I have seedling issues. There are bugs and mushrooms that sprout up FAST, and my seedlings are starting to fall over dead. At first I thought they weren't being watered often enough, so I watered them generously, only to do some more research and see that they may be damping off. So I moved them into a less well-lit but better ventilated area of the house and the ones that I moved yesterday appear to be doing much better. The remaining plants were moved this morning, so I'm waiting on a verdict on those. Two trays of plants are getting direct sunlight from the west (there is only one south-facing window in the house and it isn't usable, so this is really the best I can do), and the third is getting open shade from the east and is under a plant light as well. If they do well under the plant light, I may move them all to a small west-facing window and put the plant light next to it.

As of now, I'm afraid that if this doesn't fix the problem, I may have to start over. As it was I was about a week behind in planting, so if I do have to start over, I'll be almost a month behind. The growing season for my lettuces is almost over, anyway. This whole "garden" idea could end up being a very expensive disaster.