Crusty or Crustina? It's Anyone's Guess ...

Crusty / Crustacia on admission

Every time I get a mangey hog in, I swear it is one of the worst I've seen. On reflection though, I guess I should say each one is the worst of that presentation that I've seen.

This is Crusty / Crustina - we can't tell the sex yet, as named by Geri, so we'll go with Crusty for now.

Worst Mange crack I've seen yet

Crusty was rescued in Te Aroha and brought to me at 7pm last night. His rescuers thought he had been attacked by a dog as he was bleeding but actually he had an uber thick mange crust which had split apart, taking his skin with it. The crack was about 2cm wide down his spine and 1cm wide across his shoulders. His feet were very red on their tops and I suspect the crust has been abrading them as he walks or he has been dragging to tops along the ground as he slowly became more frozen in place by the mange crust.






















He weighed 660gms was very, very stressed on arrival and other than checking him over as much as I could without traumatising him further and giving him a thorough oil treatment, I did little else other than give him some electrolytes, food and a warm bed to hide in.

This morning he was still with us and had eaten  and had more electrolytes during the night. I got him up and had another look at him and discovered his crust was lifting so had a go at removing some of it. I kid you not, it was literally like peeling a banana....It is the thickest, most extensive crust I've seen and man, does it smell!

After giving him some pain relief - which I couldn't do last night because he was dehydrated, I peeled off about 80% of his quills with attached crust. I'm amazed and relieved it has lifted so quickly. After that I managed to find a small patch of skin that wasn't bleeding and gave him his first Ivo jab and some oral Panacur. I treated the cracked and bleeding skin on his back and skirt with some special antiseptic spray and used some Colloidal Silver spray on his poor cracked and bleeding face.

This morning when I weighed him, Crusty weighed 696gms so he'd had a nice little gain over night was great. However, after seeing the huge pile of quills and crust I decided to re weigh him and was really shocked to discover he had lost 95gms! WOW!!!

Here he is when I'd finished. He could do with another oil treatment but I'll leave that until later today to let the spray treatments dry and for him to recover from everything I put him through this morning.

There is a lot more crust to come of yet and hopefully that will come away over the next few days. His face is massively crusted and cracked as well and that will probably take a week or two to resolve. However he did manage to open his eyes a little this morning. YAY!