Four weeks ago, my 32" TSN tried very unsuccessfully to eat my 26" ID. She just managed to deglove the entire back end of him, removing about 40% of his skin and damaging a lot of muscle. I have managed to keep him free of infection this entire time with strong antibiotics, but he's not eating and seemed to take a turn for the worse yesterday. He's still upright, and is just laying quietly on the bottom. I don't want to euthanize him if he has a chance of making it, but I know he's suffering. I'd guess his chances to be around 10-15% at this point. Two days ago, I would have given him a 40% chance as he was still swimming around normally.
I'm concerned that he just doesn't have enough fat storage to have the energies needed to repair that kind of damage. I cannot get him to eat at all, and he's usually a pig. I don't want to stave off an infection only to have him starve to death.
Here's the progression:
Day one. Much of the skin is still hanging on:
Day 10ish the damaged skin sloughes off:
Day 28. You can see where some muscle died, but also some regrowth. It's his behavior that has gone down hill now which makes me think the battle is being lost to something going on inside.
I'm concerned that he just doesn't have enough fat storage to have the energies needed to repair that kind of damage. I cannot get him to eat at all, and he's usually a pig. I don't want to stave off an infection only to have him starve to death.
Here's the progression:
Day one. Much of the skin is still hanging on:
Day 10ish the damaged skin sloughes off:
Day 28. You can see where some muscle died, but also some regrowth. It's his behavior that has gone down hill now which makes me think the battle is being lost to something going on inside.
