Okay so one of my littlest females received an open wound on the back of her neck from one of her cage mates a little over a week ago.

I took her to the vet and she received a cleaning of the wound, and oral and cream antibiotics to be given for 3 weeks.

She had lost her appetite since receiving the wound and I was told she could have a fever potentially, and the mediation should help and she'd start eating again within days.

However, it's been over a week and I've been fighting with her to eat anything still. And she's started shaking get head and rejecting the medication and anything else I give her...

I don't think it's vomiting, because nothing else comes out with it like acid or other fluids. If I feed her a meal worm, she'll take it, chew it, and sit for a few seconds before shaking her head and throwing the chewed bug across the cage.

She does the same with her medicine and just shakes the liquid around the room.

Is she vomiting?

I have a number to call my vet but the vet is closed on Sundays... So I don't think I'll be able to reach them until Monday.

How do I get her to keep her food down? What can I do in the mean time to help her?

Her wound is healing amazingly btw. She could almost start growing fur again over the spot. I'm concerned about her starving though or something else. :(

Glad she is starting to heal

the loss of appetite could be from the antibiotics, and or if there was infection present. Medications can put gliders off their food just like it can for humans, it's not that uncommon for a glider with a neck wound or any wound to lose weight.

you can give her some full fat yogurt with live cultures for a treat between doses of antibiotics. The yogurt helps to restore the good guteral bacteria that the antibiotic kills off and might help settle her tummy n increase her appetite. Make sure there are not artificial sweeteners and no low fat or no fat. Yoplait makes a full fat, normal sweetener yogurt, you can use one with fruit in it as well.

What diet are you feeding?

how much does she weigh?

head shaking, the medication probably tastes bad to her. When one of mine did that I was super concerned until i was told even if the medicine is flavored it might taste terrible, I tasted it, sure enough it was terrible lol.

The head shaking was a good sign that she actually got the medicine in her even though she shook some out of her mouth after she swallowed.

It's a pretty 'normal" thing for them to shake their heads from meds, i actually have a few that have done it and more than once I've had to load another syringe to give a full dose if I knew they didn't swallow any of it.

I have one girl I would take a kernel of corn squeeze out the middle n put her dose in the the skin of the kernel instead of fighting to get her to swallow the dose from the syringe, she loved corn so much she'd eat the meds with no fuss She also lost a bunch of weight, from a neck wound that required stitches, she gained all the weight back gradually just from her normal diet and her body healing.

As far as meal worms, a lot of gliders won't eat the shell, they eat the middles and discard the rest, sometimes by flinging it, sometimes by shaking it out of their mouth.

Oh no! I doubt it’s puking unless she’s first swallowing the food, which you didn’t mention. My only guess is that because she might have a fever she doesn’t want food, usually no one wants to eat food, or feels hungry but a week without willingly taking anything seems a bit much. It might also because of the medicine for her wound which might make her less hungry.
I have no experience but I do have some ideas you could try.

Gently rubbing down her back, tummy or throat to relax her and encourage her to swallow, give her a favorite treat with the food you normally wouldn’t give to see if that entices her. For medication I would suggest using a clean dropper and giving her a squirt from the dropper each time, which she wouldn’t be able to help swallowing.

I really REALLY hope you find something to help her! Please update as soon as her health turns!

Thank you!

She's on BML but always been tiny, she's my only "twin" glider, and noticably smaller than her brother.

I've been making her cakes, and I think she might have eaten some of one of them but it's hard to tell with her...

I do yogurt on the bottom, scrabbled egg in the middle, tiny diced fresh strawberries on the top, with meal worms for the finishing touch. Those are a mix of all her favourites.

Just trying to get her to eat some part of it.

I've only seen her do the vomit thing with her medication and the mealies. So if that's all normal I feel a little better about the whole thing. I just don't think I've noticed her do it with worms before but maybe she has?

If I put something in front if her she'll usually lock it or have a tiny amount. But then she loses interest.

My mom suggested putting yogurt into one of the syringes and feeding her like a baby with a bottle, and if this continues I might try it.

lol I can picture the tiny cake being made, i've done some similar food things like that for mine

Bml is a good diet, if you have a digital kitchen scale you can weigh her n keep track of it that way if your really worried.

We usually use the gram setting and weigh gliders in the early afternoon BEFORE any treats are given to get the most accurate weight, this way they have already mostly digested the food from their last meal and their bellies are empty. If you weigh her regularly write down the date, time and what she weighed weigh her the same time every time you weigh her, this will start to show you any changes in her weight up or down.

I have a couple petite gliders that never weigh more than about 70 ish grams no matter what I feed them. When those gliders lose weight for any reason it can definately be concerning because they are visibly no bigger than a 6-7 month old joey to begin with. But try not to worry to much, weigh her regularly if you can that way you can keep track.

If it seems like a dangerous weight ( for an adult danger zone would be in the 50 gram to low 60 gram ) then talk to the vet about it and see about getting her on some critical care food, but for right now i wouldn't worry to much she should be off her meds soon so that should help as well.

And yes the head shaking is nothing to worry about. It did freak me out the first time it happened to me tho her whole little body shook when she did it lol I thought for sure she was having a seizure or something.

Update

Her wound is almost complete healed. She has a small white dot that's left of the scab.

I think some of her hair already grew back too which is nice. Soon she'll be able to rejoin the group!

As for her eating. She definitely wasn't vomiting. She'll shake and twitch only when I give her the medication, and she'll only shake her head only sometimes with meal worms.

I can get her to eat scrabbled egg, blueberries, and strawberries. She won't touch anything else right yet.

I have no doubt this will change once she rejoins the group and sees everyone else eating. She's very much a follower, I've witnessed her multiple times only trying things after watching one of the other gliders... Like going inside a sock for the first time.

She's still active and using the wheel, and she's sleeping more than she was before.