Pyoderma questions:

I just came out of a very long 3 month vet process of treating my rats for pyoderma with Baytril and Prednisolone. After my most recent recheck a week ago, the vet said their skin looked 99% clear and that I am done with the recheck process after this last batch of medication (I still have 3-4 weeks worth of meds).

Tonight, however, one of the rats has given himself a few very tiny scabs. Might be nothing, but I'm extremely paranoid at the moment while hoping the pyoderma never comes back. The weather has recently changed to be dryer and colder here in Colorado, so I'm hoping it is as simple as that.

If this happens to be the pyoderma flaring up, how can he keep getting it? How do I prevent it? I've already bleached their cage and disinfected their play areas. Is it contagious between rats to humans or humans to rats ? Is it normal for rats to give themselves scratches from time to time?

Sorry for rattling off a bunch of questions, but anything to calm my nerves would be most appreciated. The idea of repeating that long and expensive vet process from square one is terrifying.

Thanks

This sounds more like mites. Have you done a revolution treatment for mites/lice? I would do that first before assuming the pyoderma is back.

I agree with Jorats, definitely treat all the rats for mites first.

jorats said:

This sounds more like mites. Have you done a revolution treatment for mites/lice? I would do that first before assuming the pyoderma is back.

Click to expand...

I think you're right, except it looks like lice. One of my rats had a bunch of brown spots show up but, since he had suffered fur loss while he was sick, both the vet and I assumed it was just new hair growing in.

However, I decided to spend a good 20 minutes inspecting their fur closely under a bright light and caught some of that "new fur" crawling around a few times lol. I have ivermectin paste here at the house. I live in the states so is it worth the expense to try and go to the vet to get something better or will the whole rice-sized administration do just fine for the lice? Ivermectin won't react with the antibiotics he's still on or anything, right?

**Update**
Called the vet to tell them about the new situation. They wanted me to bring them in for examination of the bug so they could determine a treatment but, when I asked, my vet gave me the okay on using the Ivermectin 1.87% paste instead but asked if I could try and bag one of the bugs and drop it off anyway. Does this sound reasonable?

That sounds OK. They can ID which bug it is with a microscope.
Here is the link for Ivermectin on the Rat Guide:

http://ratguide.com/meds/anti-infectives/ivermectin.php