weird hiccups

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J

jcott

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hi guys! this is my first post on the site but i’ve been reading the forum for a long time. hoping you guys can help me figure out whether this is more than just a regular respiratory issue.

i have two female rats, tiny and little, who are sisters and a little over a year old. tiny has had respiratory problems since she was 3 months old—about every other month i have to put her on doxy and baytril to take care of another infection. i clean their cage once or twice a week, use fleece lining, and try to dust in the house as often as i can, but i think she’s just super sensitive.

this morning, though, tiny was making a sound i haven’t heard before. she sometimes gets the hiccups which i’ve read isn’t bad unless it sounds weird, but this morning her hiccups sounded really weird. it sounds like a respiratory thing to me, but it just came out of the blue and i’m worried about her. i did the phone thing and her breathing otherwise is totally normal. i took a video of her hiccuping: https://youtu.be/rOlYrD61JNQ. i immediately gave her a dose of doxy and baytril and i’ll be doing it twice a day for at least a week.

please let me know if you’ve had an experience like this, or whether you know what it might be. thank you!!
 
Kudos for being so attentive! There is a lot of debate regarding hiccups in rats as to whether hiccups are nefarious or benign in nature. I have almost a decade of experience with caring for rats, but honestly I still haven't been able to determine whether or not hiccups indicate a respiratory infection or respiratory inflammation or if they're just hiccups. I've seen/heard all kinds of hiccup noises over the years (including similar to the sounds in your video) but sometimes these hiccups would only occur just moments after a super exciting event (I think of these as benign) and on other occasions the hiccups would start up out of nowhere w/o stimulus and would occur very frequently (I like to think those are indictive of a respiratory issue).

For example, Beans (my little rattie w/ Pulmonary abscesses) hiccupped several times a day for a week+ following complications from surgery that resulted in atelectasis and subsequent pulmonary issues. Since then Beans now hiccups a couple times a day every day, which some I believe are benign and others not so much. :(

Prior to the complications, Beans only hiccuped after something fun and exciting happened or in anticipation of something fun and exciting about to happen; his brother Pi has hiccuped infrequently and only hiccups when he is anticipating exciting things are about to happen or just following an exciting event. :) They are very excitable little guys. ;)

I'm sure that doesn't exactly answer your question or give any specific advice but hopefully others will pop in to offer some solid rattie wisdom on hiccups. :)
 
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