Quarantine --it's important!

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jorats

Loving rats since 2002.
Joined
Jul 20, 2007
Messages
45,196
Location
Northeastern Ontario
Crosspost with Permission:

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I had a beloved colony of 34 males and females, most of them rescues. I decided one day to visit a petco because I had never been in one.
I met a sales associate who showed me 11 babies that she had rescued, raised and brought in to sell.
Let me back up a second. The story was, her boyfriend had a snake and bought a rat for a feeder. it was a fat, juicy rat that turned out to be a pregnant female who was attacking the snake.
The night he brought the feeder home, she gave birth to 11 babies. The girlfriend, freaked and removed mommie and babies and threatened the boyfriend with horrible pain if he went near her or the babies.
She had not been a rat slave previously, but became one instantly with the birth of these babies. She decided to keep the Mother and brought the
babies in to sell, amongst the other rats for sale and when I came in, she picked out Twitch and Jiggles to show me.
I brought them home, quarantined them in an outside building, changed clothes and washed up every time I had visited the new girls, before I came in my house where my 34 babies and all my other species of babies
live.
Within a week, my babies started dropping like fleas. Every day, I lost at least 2 a day for what seemed like an eternity. I rushed to the vet and ran
up an $1800 vet bill within 2 1/2 weeks, I still kept losing babies until I was down to 5 females and 2 males.
I am about to lose one of my males now and I know it was due to the illness he had and managed to survive.
Now, keep in mind, that the first death brought a wave of panic through my house, to the point that, within 3 days of the outbreak we were scrubbing EVERY INCH OF MY HOUSE with bleach, everything from walls to
curtains and throw pillows went through the sterilization process.
My babies kept dieing.
This lasted, in all, for almost 4 weeks, where I didn't have a minute in the day where there were no tears in my eyes. I would call home from work, 15 times a day, in fear of who had just died. Then I would be afraid to come home, for fear someone HAD died between my last phone call and the 40 minute drive home.
IT WAS A NIGHTMARE!!!
I cried to the Ratlist, several times a day, blaming myself, despite the steps I was taking to make it right, despite the debt I was incurring trying to save my babies.
Again, I was left with 7 rats from 34 and suffered every minute they did as they were systematically picked off.
If I sound overly melodramatic, it's because I am trying to make a point with nothing but facts.

DO NOT, expose your babies to other rats, unless you are prepared to lose them, every one.
I took extraordinary measures to quarantine and stay clean when I introduced new rats into my home and I lost 27 little lives that depended on me for their survival.
No matter how much you trust your fellow rat lovers, don't trust anyone or anything with the lives of your babies. if you do, you might regret it in a way you can't even fathom right now.
Off my soap box now.....that's simply what happened to me, and it changed all of us forever.
I wish you luck,
Seana
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I think it's tragic that even with careful quarantine procedures this colony still died off. :( Did she ever find out if the rats still in the store succumbed?

Sometimes I will go inside pet stores that sell animals in order to check on their living conditions but I never, ever handle them. (Even though it's very hard to resist the temptation!)

Poor little guys. :cry:
 
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