Just a quick note about a discovery I made with a few of my weanlings this afternoon!

I, too, started noticing hair loss and itchiness in my weanlings about a week ago...the adults were perfect, though! I am also a stickler about cleanliness...I only have 3 lab-style cages set up with the parents in one and the weanlings/grow-outs in the other 2 separated by sex. I disinfect their cages weekly and use pine pellets for bedding and Mazuri lab block as a diet. I began to worry about microscopic mites that take advantage of immature immune systems as it was only the babies that were affected (ie. Demodex). I took a few of the kids to the clinic with me this afternoon and did a quick skin scraping...sure enough, found mites but of the sarcoptic variety! Fortunately, they are highly host-specific so can't infect humans or other animals...but they do make the babies miserable so I opted to euthanize everyone but the parents and went ahead and treated mom and dad.

Anyhoo, thought I'd throw this out there if you want to do a quick rule out of mites...like I said, I would never had known as they didn't affect the parents like they did the babies and the babies only showed a little hair loss and itchiness (no scale, dandruff, etc.).

Hope this helps!