Her sore hocks are just bald spots for now, nothing broken or bulging. I think she got it from her cage. Her feeding station is up on a platform in her cage (her pellets, hay, and water bowl) and whenever I enter the room she would run, jump, and sideways slide on it every time to get attention and petting. The plastic flooring isn’t a smooth surface and has this cross pattern (I think for grip) and sliding on that may have done it with enough abrasion and repeated occurrences. She just likes to slide. It came on very quickly too, since the week before when I did a pre-spay exam she was totally fine. I think i’ll give it a few days and next time I clean i’ll replace it with a towel and just hope she doesn’t eat that.
She has always eaten cardboard. It’s unfortunate, because I had to take cardboard out of her cage, I used it for flooring for her “den” which is a little cove underneath her feeding station and found out one day cleaning it that she ate all the cardboard! So now she only gets little cardboard toys unless I’m there to supervise her. I’m not worried about her eating only a little cardboard, but I don’t want her to eat anything bigger than a toilet paper roll.
My only issue is I live in Alaska… So my choices of hay are pretty restricted what the stores offer. I’ve tried several brands and varieties of hay, but she really only goes for the alfalfa. Lately though, she’s been trying other kinds of hay so I’m happy for that. I do give her a handful of alfalfa everyday in addition to timothy and orchard grass hay just to be sure that she’s getting the GI motility going. For some reason, she’s more inclined to eat hay out of her litter box than the hay in her hay feeder, which wasn’t the case pre-spay. I’m thinking it’s because she gets frustrated eating between the wires in the cage (the feeder is one of those on the outside of the cage) and i’ve seen her try to dig at it to get the hay bits out of tongue reach but in the feeder. Once I finish my oatmeal, i’m going to use the carton as a hay box and place it in her cage near the litter box in addition to the hay in the litter box and she if maybe that is what she prefers over the hay feeder. Then again, she may just eat the cardboard first and push hay all over her cage, but oh well I guess.
It’s almost time for me to let her play again outside her cage, although she doesn’t seem as driven in letting me know she wants out of her cage as she did before. I would’ve let her out for some time out of her cage, but she likes to sprint around the room in circles and jump on things, so I thought it may be best she didn’t do that right after surgery.
Thanks for the advice!