• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

rat health -- is she dying?

rosecat

rosecat

New member
I just checked on the rats (i now have 5 colonies, 4 are 1.2, 1 is 1.3) and one of my females looks like crap. I'm not sure if she's preg or not she sort of has a belly, but she has no back muscle or fat and when i pet/touch her I can feel her spine. Usually my older females aren't too keen on being handled, but this one just let me do it.

Unfortunately i don't have a snake that can eat anything larger than a rat weanling, so feeding her off or euthanizing her won't do me much good. My friend's snake is of the right size to probably eat her but doesn't eat f/t or fresh killed or live rats (only live mice).

Any suggestions would be welcome. The other female and male look healthy as do the 2 weanlings that are in there.

~rosecat
 
Poor girl. Do you know how old she is? They only live 24-34 months on average. It would probably be kindest to euthanize her so she doesn't suffer.

If she is sick it might not be a good idea to feed her off anyway.
 
no i don't know how old she is (or any of the "older" adults) I asked the person i got them from but she didn't know. So my best guess is over 1yr old.

So should I just euthanize her and throw her away? I hate to waste good food for someone's snake.

~rosecat
 
I keep them as pets, and use mice as food, personally. So I have a hard time seeing them as "just food". Rats are to me what dogs and cats are to "normal" people. (my rats even know their names).
It bothers me to see them suffer. Since most people feed frozen thawed anyway, you can euthanize her to stop the suffering, then freeze her.
 
Well I see it 2 ways, but I feel that it'd be wrong to just put her in the trash. All of the pets (rats & hamsters) I kept as a kid are all buried in my dad's backyard.

I might post on one of the college chats I'm in and see if anyone is interested in her as a feeder. I would prefer to euthanize her and sell/give away as f/t. But as it is i don't have a lot of room in my freezer and having an adult rat f/t that i will never use taking up space doesn't do me much good
 
I estimate my oldest pet rat to be 24-26 months. She is all bony on top and fat on the bottom but is not suffering at all. She eats like a horse, and still loves attention. As long as your girl eats and seems pain free I'm sure she can wait until there's room in the freezer!
 
It just seems odd because a few days ago when I was really looking at everyone to do a bedding change she seemed in good condition. But I also am not sure if she was the pups mom or if its the other fem so that could also be part of it i suppose.
 
I really hate it when it comes down to that point.. Jenn will tell you I don't like being around when the ratties are used for substanance... The mice don't really bother me that much to feed off, but them darn little ratties..

If it is a pet Elizabeth, you know your self that you would rather bury it for your peace of mind.. Do what you gotta do, I would not hold it against..

Regards.. Tim of T and J
 
She doesn't seem to be doing any better, maybe even a little worse, but not a huge change. She seems as if she's given up. But she looks preg ... and i think i can feel the babies ... i'm half tempted to try hydrating her, but i don't know if i have a small enough needle.
 
Liz, if you can't get it in a vein, just go under the skin. Actually they absorb it pretty well this way. You can do it in a few places but not too much the first time. I would use sterile water, not ringers as the saline could cause tissue damage, same with sugar on tissue damage. Good luck, susang
 
sterile water? I have about 100 mL of the ringers in one bag and then an unopened 1L ringers, and the line for the ringer's but i don't know if i have a small enough needle... i have 18G, i might have a 20g, but that's still big for a rat. How many mL should I give? i just do sub-cue fluids not IV, so ...
 
Also why do you think the ringer's does bad things? I've used it to hydrate cats and dogs sub-cue so im not quite sure why it would be any different on a rat other than the amount that i use ... i'm thinking maybe 10-20 mL, usually on kittens we aim for about 50mL, 100 mL is the max
 
I think the lactated will be OK it has sodium in it but can be used subq for animals. I would start with a smaller amount.
 
how small? the bag i have is only marked at every 50 mL and since i don't think i have any syringes i'd have to use the line ... i guess i should look for smaller needles, I might have a 22G somewhere hopefully that would be small enough
 
I have no basis other then human and 50 ml seems like a lot compared to the size of the rat. Start with less and if she does OK you could do more.
 
well i've poked her twice, second time i got interupted by the phone. not quire sure how much I've gotten into her, maybe a few mL ... she peed *lol*

~rosecat
 
well i'm going to guess and say I put somewhere around 15-25 mL into her... i don't know how much its going to help, it seems like it could just be her time. I put her back in the rack and she lost her balance and fell onto her side and just laid there. She looks so pitiful. I'd be surprised if the hydrating helps, but I suppose we can just wait and see. I might try giving her more tomorrow if it seems to be working.
 
Shame Rose I hope your little girl comes right.

I recently went through something very similar with my favourite rat, Jacqui. And I feel quite terrible about it. I think she died of a heart attack when she went into labour...poor old girl.

I think, by the sounds of it, your girl is getting on in life. She should either be retired from breeding and kept as a pet or fed off (personally I can't feed off the big rats either, the biggest I can manage is a rat fuzzy and even that's pushing it!). I feel really terrible that I didn't take my girl out of the colony sooner, before she could fall preg again!

Anyways, best of luck!! Thinking of you! :)
 
Based on how she looks this morning I think that the kindest thing for me to do is euthanize her. She looks worse if that is possible, i put food right in front of her and she turned away. It seems as if she's just lost the will to live. And even if I could keep her as a pet, I honestly think that she is just too far along for anything to help much now.
But as a lesson to myself, all of the young rats that I have produced or bought as replacements I will make sure to note in my records when I got them/DOB and keep tabs, so that I can retire them before they get to this point.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top