Pet Forum / Mammals / Rats / December 2007

Firstly I have to say some of the below might be a bit unpleasant, so
be warned :).
I'm looking for opinions regarding one of my Rats, Eddie. She is
around 2.5 years old now, and is still very active and happy for her

I can't make up my mind, so any advice would be helpful.
As best I can, I'll try to describe her condition.
At some point in the past two months I think she had a stroke of some
kind.  After that, her condition has steadily deteriorated.

This article seems to show that the administration of tylosin over a two
year period extends rats lives:
http://www.inchem.org/documents/jecfa/jecmono/v29je08.htm
(about halfway down the page)

Just got two rats home from the pet store and the PEW is sneezing and today
she was sitting on my shoulder against my ear and I could hear a little
wheezing when she was breathing.  The hooded one doesn't have these
symptoms.

Tried a little experiment with my rats today.  I used a (nontoxic) Sharpie
to label 4 different kinds of lab blocks: Teklad 2014, Teklad 2018, Teklad
8640 and Mazuri Rat & Mouse Diet.  Put two pellets of each in the rats'
dish.

Teklad 2018 had no detectable amounts of mercury while certain shipments of
Purina 5001 had enough that it was of "potential biological significance."
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1280388
"[...] The Purina 5001 diet is an open diet; that is, its ...

This one isn't the Gambian rat.  Apparently it's a new species of rat -
which has no fear of humans.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/photogalleries/giantrat-pictures
/index.html
The guy holding the rat in the photo might be a Mammal Expert and the rat

Over the last three days Scoot has been trying to bite me through the cage.
Any time I place my finger near the cage he tries to bite me!  I have no clue
what has caused this change in behavior.  Any ideas would be greatly
appreciative.  I love him and dont want to have to get rid ...

Julie and Cecily are now settled in amicably with Annabel sharing the
same cage;  they're not really babies any more, though!   Here are some
pictures taken today of them exploring the bathroom again (very
old-fashioned of them to eat soap...), followed by some taken two weeks

Hi everyone I just thought it was time we had some
upliftment..(excluding sports bras girls)  We have a resident Rat/s
living in our walls.  They are driving us nuts at night.  They squabble
and squeek.  We bought a humane rat trap and Michael found one in it the

Tar had cuddles and treats last night as always. Gave him his bedtime hugs
and said good night, when I woke I found he had died in the night. All
though he did have problems this was totally unexpected and a huge shock.
He is buried next to his brother Art, they never were apart ...

... from her girl parts. I am aware that this is not good, though at
her age (2yrs) I am not going to get her spayed. She is on antibiotics
already, so I don't think taking her to the vet for them is going to
be a good use of money. Other than the intermittent bleeding, she

So this week my sweet buy Tonka started getting sick. Red discharge
(their normal mucous color) coming from his nose _ but a lot of it _ ,
losing weight, being lethargic, and those familiar tired eyes.  I just
put Chewie to sleep two weeks ago!  Well, Tonka is now in a separate

It's been a few days since I got my rats and I noticed that they haven't
been too excited about the rat food I've been giving them.  I gave them a
(dog's) milk bone the other day and they gobbled it up like it was going out
of style.  I noticed today that they weren't really eating ...

Poor Tar, his tumour under his front leg is growing quite rapidly now and i
can feel another one not far from it and a small at his abdomen.
His hind leg paralysis is no better, the paralysis was one of the reasons I
decided not to have the tumour removed as he would have been