R
RM Watkins
Guest
I recently started having rats as companion animals after a 15 year hiatus. I'm currently living in Sweden.
When I brought home my three girls at 9 weeks, one already had some porypus around her eyes and it looked like some in her ears. They were also scratching. There were no other symptoms. I thought maybe mites. She also started sneezing. I used diatomaceous earth in their playbox and basically dusted each rat with some, making sure they did not breath in any. Her sneezing got worse and turned into wheezing, which would stop if I attended to her. I ordered baytril and doxycycline to treat her myself, because the vet wanted 150usd per rat, and I had to wait until my next paycheck. The meds weren't arriving (eBay order from out of the country) and I was panicking as I listened to her wheezing getting worse each night. It got awful.
Then, it stopped. Her wheezing, her sneezing, and the porypus was gone. When the meds did arrive a week later, I didn't give it to her because I didn't want to dose out antibiotics casually. She hasn't had any symptoms since. It's been two months.
So... Was this a cold? And not uncurable respiratory infection? Her symptoms matched those exactly with respiratory infection. All threads everywhere said it would get worse until she died.
I've had trouble finding any information that doesn't tell me to immediately stuff her with medication. If I had the medication, I certainly would have stuffed her with it (proper dosage of course, I'm just being dramatic). But it seems like that would have been the wrong treatment, and I would have been subjecting my rat to medication she didn't need.
I called a breeder in my area to ask about it, and she said that rats can get colds from new locations, or change in temp, but it was just like we get colds and it would go away, like it did. I couldn't find any information online to back up her claims or my experience.
Bedding at the time was fleece, spot cleaned many times a day and washed every other day. Her sneezing started and stopped during the fleece bedding phase. Now it's carefresh and aspen.
Thoughts?
When I brought home my three girls at 9 weeks, one already had some porypus around her eyes and it looked like some in her ears. They were also scratching. There were no other symptoms. I thought maybe mites. She also started sneezing. I used diatomaceous earth in their playbox and basically dusted each rat with some, making sure they did not breath in any. Her sneezing got worse and turned into wheezing, which would stop if I attended to her. I ordered baytril and doxycycline to treat her myself, because the vet wanted 150usd per rat, and I had to wait until my next paycheck. The meds weren't arriving (eBay order from out of the country) and I was panicking as I listened to her wheezing getting worse each night. It got awful.
Then, it stopped. Her wheezing, her sneezing, and the porypus was gone. When the meds did arrive a week later, I didn't give it to her because I didn't want to dose out antibiotics casually. She hasn't had any symptoms since. It's been two months.
So... Was this a cold? And not uncurable respiratory infection? Her symptoms matched those exactly with respiratory infection. All threads everywhere said it would get worse until she died.
I've had trouble finding any information that doesn't tell me to immediately stuff her with medication. If I had the medication, I certainly would have stuffed her with it (proper dosage of course, I'm just being dramatic). But it seems like that would have been the wrong treatment, and I would have been subjecting my rat to medication she didn't need.
I called a breeder in my area to ask about it, and she said that rats can get colds from new locations, or change in temp, but it was just like we get colds and it would go away, like it did. I couldn't find any information online to back up her claims or my experience.
Bedding at the time was fleece, spot cleaned many times a day and washed every other day. Her sneezing started and stopped during the fleece bedding phase. Now it's carefresh and aspen.
Thoughts?
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