CHF vs Respiratory Disease?

Hello all, I've missed you!
Unfortunately I don't have good news. This year has been rough for me. I have lost 3 babies. Matteo, then Mordecai, and most recently, Moose. Moose just passed this past week. We miss him dearly.
Anywho, with all those unfortunate deaths, I am paranoid as they come. Molly has been acting weird. Lethargic, slow when she walks, breathing heavy, slightly puffed fur. She is on Amoxi as of tonight. It's all I have. With her being over 2 I now worry about CHF.
What are the differences with that and a respiratory issue? Her limbs don't seem blue but I don't know what to treat for. Matteo had what we thought was a resp. issue but he passed too soon to treat for heart failure(After a long round of antibiotics to treat for said resp. issue). How long should I give the amoxi before I move on? Just would like to avoid losing anymore of my precious babies. Thanks, and I hope everyone is doing well.

sorry. difference is, a kidney based CHF rAT worsens with antibiotics, while a respiratory based chf rat usually improves. The symptoms are identical

In my experience CHF usually comes on suddenly, when rat phoning you don't hear anything that you would associate with respiratory. They are usually gasping, have discoloration of tail, feet, tongue, and/or inside of the mouth. With CHF you need to remove the fluid from the lungs with lasix. We haven't had a CHF rat make it out of the vet - we end up having them pts or in one case he died as we we're getting ready to leave. All our's have been cardiac related. We didn't just choose not to treat - we couldn't get them out of the oxygen chamber and/or their gasping under control. The three we had died within 24 hours of showing symptoms.

With URI, we treat with baytril, doxy for six weeks. We currently have a couple that we just cannot seem to rid of their symptoms so we don't know what is going on. So they are on baytril, doxy, lasix, theophylline, resp calm and we just added azithromycin. We are kind of at a loss for these guys. X-ray was inconclusive - one could have something in his chest, but not really sure. I think what we're going with at this point is most like lung abscesses and he will be a lifer on meds.

Normally though for URI's we start with just baytril and doxy. Although we have treated with just doxy and had good results.

Our heart condition rats we treat with enalapril. We've had so many different conditions and medication combinations its hard to say use this for this and that for that. You really should go see a vet and go from there. I hope she gets better.

Zanya said:

Hello all, I've missed you!
Unfortunately I don't have good news. This year has been rough for me. I have lost 3 babies. Matteo, then Mordecai, and most recently, Moose. Moose just passed this past week. We miss him dearly.
Anywho, with all those unfortunate deaths, I am paranoid as they come. Molly has been acting weird. Lethargic, slow when she walks, breathing heavy, slightly puffed fur. She is on Amoxi as of tonight. It's all I have. With her being over 2 I now worry about CHF.
What are the differences with that and a respiratory issue? Her limbs don't seem blue but I don't know what to treat for. Matteo had what we thought was a resp. issue but he passed too soon to treat for heart failure(After a long round of antibiotics to treat for said resp. issue). How long should I give the amoxi before I move on? Just would like to avoid losing anymore of my precious babies. Thanks, and I hope everyone is doing well.

Click to expand...

Oh I am so sorry for all your losses

how is Molly now?
I've had 3 or 4 rats with CHF, and all were treated for and most did well, living for several more months at least, with only one exception

I think if you are seeing no improvement with the antibiotics, you should take Molly to the vet for a trial of lasix or enalapril/benazapril
It is very safe to give either of the latter two, and if the issue is heart related you'll see improvement pretty quickly,
within hours depending on the type and dose of lasix, if given
and within about a day if you go with the enalapril/benazapril


I was lucky and caught the symptoms early with my boys, and they all lived 4 to 6 mos more on meds. One did not even die from the heart problem, it was something else.

My one girl who had CHF, I didn't catch that til she was much sicker; she only lived for about 10 days even with treatment. she was, however, already over 30 mos old


the limbs turning blue and getting cold is a late symptom, early symptoms are very similar to resp illness except that antibiotics don't help. You may notice that the tip of the tail and the back feet get cold after the rat has been running around, but if your girl is not running around, then...you're not going to see this sign

the tricky cases are when you've got both resp illness AND heart issues, the antibiotics will help but not enough

watch for her to be 'winded' or want to rest often while playing, if she does, or after doing anything that takes effort.
some rats with heart issues may hang their head over a shelf, and may seem to be uncomfortable laying down,
this would also be a later sign, as fluid may be building up in the lungs, around the lungs or in the abdomen.

hope this helps.

If you try enalapril/benazepril and it helps, then she has a heart problem and more heart meds are added