caught salmonella from the sick hedgehogs

Advertise with us
shop deals on amazon
Shop deals on ebay
Rabbit Talk Forum

Help Support Rabbit Talk Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
akane

akane

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 17, 2010
Messages
7,133
Reaction score
20
Location
Iowa
I don't recommend it but it's nowhere near as bad as the media says. I spent one day with certain muscle groups not working. I had to flop around the bed till I fell off because I couldn't sit up. It hurt to breathe partially from the muscles across my chest being one of those groups that didn't work right. I had a headache for 3 days. Vertigo for a day. You know how fun it is getting to the bathroom when you have to roll off the side of the bed, push yourself off the floor, and then walk in to random things on the way? Random other things hurt like my achilles tendons. :? I pretty much stared at the tv for a day. The next day I had a headache and that was mostly it and the next day. Although I haven't fully tested my muscles and balance by laying here in bed watching tv and just going to the kitchen for pudding and snapple. At least I can get out of bed normally and don't walk in to stuff. They say it can take months to fully recover. Especially the digestive tract. I've been hungry but can't find much I actually want to eat. It all messes up my stomach.

In the end I suggest you heed the warning of washing your hands after handling exotic pets. Which is pretty much anything but a cat or dog. They naturally carry salmonella and can have an outbreak at any time.
 
Oh Bless your heart! :( Sending prayers and feel better soon thoughts your way!
 
Yikes! That sounds awful. Sorry you're going through it. Thank you for the reminder, I admit I am bad about that.

*fingers crossed for a speedy recovery*
 
Salmonella is no joke. One of my twins spent 3 days in ICU because of it. The other twin began to show symptoms less than a week later. They were only 2 months old. We have lots of lizards and such around our house and the best we can figure is that my then 2 year old touched something outside and then touched the babies. He tested positive but never showed symptoms. The health department called to ask us all sorts of crazy questions. It took months before they were 100% normal again. I never want to deal with that ever ever again! Hope you feel better soon!
 
Glad you are feeling better but how scary!

We just got chickens and I am paranoid careful with the kids, washing hands for a full 2 minutes, no touching faces or eating, drinking until hands are washed.

I am actually thinking of doing a shallow clorox/water container so the soles of shoes are disinfected before entering the house.

Have you tried toast with some honey on it? Even when I was getting over a bout of food poisoning and didn't want to eat, the toast and honey did the trick to get me eating again.

Sending good thoughts you keep feeling better!
 
i guess I was incredibly lucky as a kid. I CONSTANTLY played with our chickens, tying them up, taking them for walks and then going to raid the gooseberry patch (without washing hands). Oh my.... God was certainly watching over me wasn't he?

Get better soon!
 
Thanks for the reminder. I hope you continue to heal fast. I have taken to keeping hand sanitizer in one of my rabbitries. Think I will get some for the other one.
 
My daughter got salmonella when she was 11 years old. It started like any diarrhea illness. Diarrhea, slight fever for a day or so. Then the vomiting started and the fever spiked up to 105°. I took her to the ER and they gave her some anti nausea meds and sent her home. Her fever shot up to 106° and she was delirious and started passing large amounts of blood in her stool. I took her back to the ER that night. She was admitted and they did a stool culture, it came back positive for salmonella. At that point she was not doing well. A medevac flight was called and 45 minutes later my daughter and I were on a jet for Seattle from our home in Alaska. We had three flight nurses and two pilots on the flight with us. I was able to lay down on the extra gurney and sleep during the hour and a half flight. An ambulance met us at the airport and wisked us to Childrens Hospital in Seattle. We were admitted via the ER. She was screaming in pain so they administered morphine on a drip. She had blood stools and blood vomit. Scariest time of our lives.

She was given some more testing and had a micro tear in her intestines and developed a septic infection with the salmonella running rampet through her entire body affecting her organs, etc.

She lost almost 20 POUNDS going from 70 to 50 pounds during that week in ICU. Her immune system was so shot that everyone that came into her room had to be in full gowns, gloves and masks.

Recovery took MONTHS before her system was back to normal. She was weak and missed a month of school. When she did go back to school it was part time and she had to drink and eat every hour or so to gain her strength back and also to help her stomach and intestines heal from smaller bland foods. She had never really had a bad illness before in her life. She almost died. Salmonella is nothing to take lightly.

She's 16 and a half now and is getting accepted (hopefully) into a premed program this summer at UH Manoa on Oahu. She wants to specialize in infectious disease.
 
Oh goodness I hope you feel better soon! Thank you for the reminder. My cockatiel always nags me to regurgitate for him for some reason. (I don't do it often for his health reasons) but he normally won't eat the pellets unless its strait from mama. Wetness isn't a factor since I tried dampening crushed pellets but he'd rather take it dry just direct from me. I mostly try to sneak them in with his cooked food since they are organic. Freaking $10lb food lol it does worry my though cuz I don't want to get salmonella :(
 
I am glad you are on the mend and for offering a reminder that our pets can kill us if we not constantly vigilant about sanitation but I would like to clarify that there are different strains of salmonella, some come and go like the common cold and some are more harmful, as some here have experienced.

Most of my relatives are livestock farmers as am I and I am constantly exposed to and likely ingesting animal wastes, I was also was a serious reptile breeder in the 90's and have had many exotic pets, thankfully I know of no one that had a case of salmonella that required medical attention so please, lets not get too paranoid about the possible pathogens our animals might have.
 
:yeahthat:

Salmonella is present in every avian, amphibian and reptilan species. It is 'shed' when the animal is stressed-- that is one reason why egg farms feed antibiotics to the hens every day.
There is an old saying "Everyone eats a peck of dirt in their lifetime" which was used to illustrate that a little bit of dirt is not going to hurt a person-- it is HOW our immune systems learn how to defend our bodies properly..
 
I used to not worry much about washing my hands after handling or butchering poultry until last year about this time when a friend and I butchered 150 Cornish X's. The next morning I awoke to stomach cramps and I spent the next 9 days with diarrhea and made two trips to ER severely dehydrated to find out I had food poisoning very similar to salmonella.
Any kind of food poisoning is serious. Please wash your hands regularly.
I learned the hard way.
Tommy
 
Note these are ill hedgehogs. They either have an excessive amount of salmonella or a strain that is not normal. I'm not saying you need to be paranoid about every exotic you touch but if you don't know the health of the animal or know it's sick you should definitely wash your hands.
 
Oh so it's only released when they are stressed? Hmm. Well I worry about my birds safety more then mine which is why I don't mouth feed him often. But he will pester me forever sometimes untill I give in lol I have played in the dirt alot as a kid with all kinda wild critters so I probably have some immunity towards mild strains. But I'm into exotics and that doesn't faze me. If I were to worry about a microbe it probably be MDR tuberculosis and if seimming,Naegleria fowleri lol
 
A lot of pet foods have salmonella in them so it's not smart to put them in your mouth. Pets are more durable to salmonella than people. I wash my hands after mixing the cat food brands for the hedgehogs or dumping the dog food in the resealing container. I wash my hands after taking care of bunnies but it's a 30min drive home and I like to chew on my fingernails. It's hard to remember to stop although easier since i threw out some dead kits and then stuck my finger in my mouth and realized what i'd just done.
 
Eww lol well it could have been worse :) I don't think my bird food has salmonella. Probably as long as its used up in time. It gets used up in a week then I pull more from the freezer. It's all certified organic and has nothing in it we wouldn't eat which it should at freaking $10 a pound lol
 
Shelbers91

Which food is it? Zupreem or Harrisons? Regardless they are safe for human consumption. :) My husband tries all the parrot food before giving it to them.

With our parrots we live by the:

If you would not eat it, don't give it to your parrot.

The reason being is that they can get sick from salmonella, ecoli, etc. They are not like dogs or cats and their system can't handle that bacteria.
 
Yup. Harrison's ^^ I do the same thing. People think I am weird when I get my bird something and eat it first. Lol but hey if I get sick they could too (crappy pellet brand or seed brand) I heard there was a recall on vitae brand. http://petpitchusa.wordpress.com/2013/0 ... almonella/ but I have loved the results of Harrison's pellets and roudybushes compressed pellets I feed lafabers too for variety plus veggies and some seed and all that jazz lol
 

Latest posts

Back
Top