Nessie's siblings

[jorats]

I got my Nessie in early August. She was found in a box with 7 of her brothers dropped off in a park. She is 7 months old now and I just found out that all her brothers except for one have all died. :shock: These boys were not all in one home either, a couple were living with the "head" of our local SPCA, another couple with a volunteer and such. They didn't do any post mortems to find out why. I'm getting a little worried now. But so far, she's very spunky and happy.
Any idea what could have taken all the boys like that?

 

[mamarat2]

Did anyone give you any input of how they died? I mean were they all just found dead in the cage or any thoughts as to resp issues?

In my group I have two different things going on with two sets of brothers:

Group #1
Fizzgig, Lightning, Spice, Dusty - Dusty is the only survivor at 28 months old

Fizzgig had a heart attack that threw clots everywhere (necropsy)
Lightning had various blood clots - definite on the spinal as the vet "felt" it and both vets agreed and highly likely on lung clots
Spice - lung lesions possibly clots, not varified by necropsy but unresponsive to any ab's only responded to pred
Dusty - didn't get the bad clot genetics (??) still living, ear issues though and masses


Group #2 - These boys were living outside for a while, in April, and its cold outside. As far as my vet is concerned, all of them have some type of lung scarring from the conditions they were in but Lou was not necropsied as a definitive and Ollie was not in my possession when he passed.
7 boys - dad and sons
Ollie - dad - found dead in cage
Lou - resp issues died from complications (pts)
Stanley - resp issues
Larry - lung scarring, highly chronic resp issues
Moe - still living, to my knowledge, not sure of problems
Bud - ok, no known resp probs
Curly - ok, no known resp probs

My point with my rambling is that, as you well know, it could be genetic or environmental. Sounds like at this point Nessie is still doing well and maybe it was genetics?? And she got the good genes!!

 

[mamarat]

Apparently they were just found dead in their cage, no sign of illness, they were fine the day before. SPCA thinks it's just bad breeder.

 

[jorats]

That's what worries me the most, no signs of illness but then, I don't know just how experienced they are with rats.
Bad genetics indeed... I just hope it doesn't affect Nessie.

We do have a very bad breeder here, she was suppose to have stopped, she's in the valley. Out of four male siblings from this breeder, all four were extremely aggressive, one died at 4 months, the other died young too of some kind of blood disorder. The scary thing is Nessie looks exactly like these boys. So that would mean this breeder is at it again. I sure hope I'm wrong.

 

[Fidget]

Well that's kind of scary, I guess you don't know what to expect, if it's something congenital does it just affect boys, or does she have something ticking inside too, or maybe she's the one that just escaped the problem, even bad lines have exceptions to the expected

 

[Godmother]

That is a worry all right. I also was wondering if it could be an X-chromosome thing that would affect boys only.

http://www.ikm.jmu.edu/Buttsjl/ISAT493/ ... tance.html

 

[jorats]

That was very interesting Godmother.