Red Urine in 1-year-old Rat

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reuvenperlman

New Member
Joined
Mar 27, 2013
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2
Location
Minneapolis
My rat Orson has a red/brown color to his urine. We took him to the emergency vet and she did an examination. She was able to take a sample of his urine and ran it through a centrifuge. To her surprise, the color didn't separate, indicating that it is not red blood cells (which would have indicated something as simple as a UTI or bladder infection.) She now believes there to be two options:
1. Pigmentation is caused by a traumatic event.
2. This is a sign of a serious chronic problem: anemia, kidney failure, etc.
She said that usually with trauma there are other signs and we keep a pretty good eye one him and have not witnessed any falls or anything of the like.

So, she said there are some tests that they could run, including x-rays and blood tests to try to find out more information. More than anything, she was befuddled by the situation and didn't have a clear course of action.

We took him home. They pushed fluid and prescribed us antibiotics just in case.

My question to you, community of rat lovers, is this: have any of you had similar experiences? If so, what course of treatment did you take?

Right now, we have isolated him and gave him multiple sources of water (if kidney issue, we want to flush his system) and we're giving him daily antibiotics.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. We love him very much and want to take good care of him.
 
AT this point wait to see if the antibiotics and fluids help then if they don't go on to next steps...most times with urinalysis they look for bacteria in the urine, which could still be a UTI...so we will keep our fingers crossed its something that simple as they can cure very easily.
 
reuvenperlman said:
After identifying the swollen bladder, what was the course of treatment? How did the rat fair? How much did the X-ray and treatment cost?
Click to expand...

I would definitely get a quote on that, xrays cost a LOT normally but sometimes vets have much lower pricing or won't charge the norm.
 
He was on a course of antibiotics for about 3 weeks, it's been a few years so I don't remember the exact medication (It was a form of doxy I think). And it did go away. The xray was $60 at the time. :)
 

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