and Along Came Hector

This morning my phone rang. On the other end of the line was a vet nurse from Pet Doctors, Tristram St. She told me another vet nurse had given her my number - oh dear ..... my hoggie 'fame' seems to be speading LOL! It seems the clinic had had a little hoggie in care since the middle of last week and she'd been told he needed to 'move' along hehe. As she has a dog at home and no spare room she was unable to take this little boy home so asked if I could help. Of course, the answer was 'yes' and after arranging for her to bring him to me at 10.30 I contacted Narelle to let her know I had an 'incoming' and to request a foster placement for him, then I got busy preparing a hospital box for him.

Hector arrives

 When the nurse arrived I invited her in and opened the box she was gently carrying to have a look at the hoggie. OH MY!!!! He was just beautiful. He had mange but she'd done a good job with him so far. He'd had an Ivomec injection last week and most of the mange crust was gone, leaving an almost completely bald little hoggie weighing in at 401gms. His spikey 'cap' is pretty funny, he is a bit too skinny and has a small mange crack on his face but other than that he looks perfect - albeit bald!

After giving him a warm oil bath; as his skin was dry and flakey, I started Hector on Panacur. The Ivomec/Panacur/Oil combination is now going to be my standard 'entry' treatment (under advisement from Narelle) for mange hogs and pretty much takes care of all of the possible parasitic load that a hog will have; apart form Fluke, which is rare in NZ hogs.

In fact, today I learned how to administer Ivomec via subcutaneous injection. This means that I can now treat our Waikato rescues for mange in a much more affordable manner. To date, I've been using Advocate which even discounted costs $11/pipette. With a minimum of two doses per hog for any I hogs I rescue including my wildlings and when I have been providing Advocate for many of the fosters who haven't been able to afford it themselves, the cost soon mounts up. So I'm quite relieved to now have a really good alternative in place.

Back to Hector ...

After tucking him up in his bedroom I left him to settle in. Later; when I checked on him, he was totally blissed out on his heatpad in 'splat hog' mode LOL!

I likeeee this heatpad a lots!

Although I had contacted Narelle about a foster placement for this wee boy I have to admit I have completely  fallen in love with him, so for now I am going to keep him and will see how we go in regards to my allergies. When I had Yoda inside and then Sonny, I coped ok as I was on my Lupus medication which seemed to ameliorate my allergic reactions to hogs. Unfortunately since then I have had to come off the medication so we'll take it day by day and change tack if necessary. From tomorrow, I am going to house Hector in the garage with his crate set up on one of my propagation heat pads (which I also use for soap making) on top of an insulated base and I'll cover his box overnight to help keep the heat in. I think this set up will ensure that he will be warm enough.