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Superconsndar posted:^^It's like 3/4 weeks old, it's really too young to even be fully weaned Depending on how lovely the pet store is, they could actually be 6-7 weeks old but just crappily fed and undersized too. We see a lot of those, unfortunately.
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Jan 3, 2012 01:34
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Superconsndar posted:This rat is so hosed up. His pneumonia is so bad he gasps constantly, and it doesn't look like he's absorbing nutrients- he eats constantly, but just gets a huge belly and then shits it all out while remaining skeletal. All the first vet would give me is baytril, and not enough, so he's going to a new one Monday who will hopefully give a poo poo. I've got him on antihistamines and an expectorant which keeps him hacking out enough mucous to allow him to get enough oxygen to stay alive, and I'm giving him subq fluids, but he isn't improving. FWIW, my very first rat was a feeder that some jackass had bought for their snake and ignored pneumonia in for several weeks. She literally never got better. We kept her on a bronchiodialator and antibiotics her whole life. She basically slept a huge amount of the time and got winded walking around. She was a shy thing and mostly seemed to enjoy lounging in the hammock and eating rat junk food so that's what I let her do. Nebulizer treatments weekly did help somewhat.
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Mar 11, 2012 06:10
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Maybe get a fecal done? He may have giardia/coccidia/other gross intestinal things which might explain the diarrhea/failure to thrive.
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Mar 11, 2012 20:02
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The Snoo posted:
I think it's a pretty dick move to keep a social animal alone. You got the rat knowing you couldn't afford to provide her with what she needs -- appropriate companionship. This is just as retarded as buying a dog and not being able to afford a leash. The woman who helped you is stupid. Look at it this way -- the pet store insists on keeping two rats at the time. You're not meeting the same standard of care as a pet store.
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Jun 23, 2012 18:34
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thanks for being a dick about it.
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Also hopefully you have her some climbing things and levels built into the bird cage you've got her in?
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Jun 26, 2012 18:55
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Maeume posted:Um...because a rat doesn't develop downstairs fully until `5-6 weeks, and this baby is probably 22-24 days old. They're hard to tell apart when they're babies, unless you are fully experienced in repeatedly sexing a rat. If you have the ability to fully sex a rat the second they pop out, congratulations, but I'm willing to bet not everyone can. Also, being a rat owner for a while, I know well enough to keep them separated. >.> All the babies I've had in my house dropped their nuts at around 3 weeks of age. Also you can see nipples after like a week? I'd never sexed babies before, but the first litter I had I got them all right.
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Aug 30, 2012 18:11
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Bear Rape posted:Question about rat behavior: is it weird that 2 of my rats (both of them PEWs and I believe they're also siblings) like to try to give bedding/food/toys to my dog? It is the weirdest thing. Any time my dog lays next to the cage, they'll start trying to press things through the cage towards him. There's a small pile of bedding and grain in front of the cage where he'll sit and watch them sometimes. This is probably some nefarious plot. My rats used to feed the dog so they could rip out big chunks of her hair for nesting when she was nearby. Poor dumb bald dog.
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Sep 3, 2012 19:24
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RazorBunny posted:By the way, I discovered that I could literally buy a new fleece blanket for every single cage cleaning and it would still be cheaper than using CareFresh. That's only because I have an IKEA nearby and they sell fleece blankets for $2.49, though. I do this too, only I clean out the local thrift stores of baby blankets and fleece! Costs me about a dollar/week in bedding.
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Sep 9, 2012 23:19
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Robomouse posted:... I should not be surprised by that. Ah well. Eh, Super is a little bitter towards ratladies for some unknown reason that I've never quite understood. The breeders I've dealt with locally are basically crazy dog ladies, but with rats. I think it's kind of weird to be obsessed enough with a specific kind of any animal to, like, make special trips to breeders, or obsessively track their bloodlines, or to get a special rat or dog or bird or whatever, but I realize it's A Thing, so I kind of roll with it. A lot of my adopters have had breeder rats before adopting from us, and in general I found them to be super relaxed, laid back, cuddly rats, moreso than the average rats we would get in. I can say that I never got in rats from the crazy "responsible breeders", and the one time someone tried, I emailed that rattery and they went and got the rats. I personally abhor pet stores, since they do overburden rescues in many ways -- Petland, Petco, and Petsmart here straight up have all tried to dump sick rats on us so they didn't have to deal with them, and I witnessed a Petsmart employee giving out our rescue info to a bunch of college kids to dump their rats "when they got tired of them" because we're "nice people".
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Sep 30, 2012 22:56
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Superconsndar posted:It isn't unknown and I'm not bitter, I've always been up front about why I hold the opinions that I do about them. They claim to breed for health and temperament while actually breeding for aesthetics. They do not track the long term health of what they produce as they claim to do, and breed rats with known health problems and temperament issues because they have insert-color-gene here that they just ~haveeeee~ to add to their lines. They're incredibly elitist and refuse to breed from unknown stock in spite of their lines being almost universally hosed. They're certainly not WORSE than any other breeder, they're just not particularly better. If they were up front about this, fine, but it bothers me that there's so much cognitive dissonance in the community as a whole about what they produce. They are almost exactly like conformation dog breeders/show ladies. I say "unknown" because it's virtually exactly the same as in any other species, yet anytime someone mentions going to a breeder in a dog thread, there's not a similar wall of text about the insanity of dog ladies. Maybe because there's a more vocal community of dog lovers here advocating going to responsible breeders, who knows. Superconsndar posted:They don't track poo poo. That's the problem. They say all the right words and when it comes down to it half of their records are either forged or don't actually exist at all. Ok, I have no way to either prove or disprove that. It seems pointless to claim to have records that don't exist and that most people will never ask for. Superconsndar posted:Yes, they tend to be more well socialized because they are handled from an earlier age. Woop-de-doo. When they develop genetic male aggression at 8 months or crap out from a pituitary tumor at a year, that added socialization won't matter. Having raised several litters here that were socialized from an early age (as in, literally touched from the day they entered the world), I would comparatively say that their rats were friendlier overall and tended to have very laid back, mellow dispositions. I get what you're saying as far as handling being important, but I'm also comparing this against rats I've personally raised. There were rats in those bunches that were friendly and would accept handling, but were just very high strung or nervous, and that was not something I saw a lot of in comparison. There is a genetic element to personality -- a border collie is never going to be a mellow laphound, and you're really never going to get a ton hero worship from a Shiba. Superconsndar posted:The rattery came and got their rats because they were called out and word would have gotten around if they hadn't. They're all ready to tear out each other's throats at a drop of a hat and if they thought for a second they could have ignored that call with no fear of being caught, they probably would. I don't understand how me emailing them and saying "Hey, are you familiar with Jane Smith? I think she's trying to dump some of your rats on us" is "calling them out". Had they not responded, I would have just taken the rats -- it's not like it's some community shaming. I want people to call me if "my" animals are being dumped. I extend the same courtesy to others. Comparatively, when local shelters have called rabbit breeders to pick up their tattooed rabbits, they were told to go ahead and euth. them. Or the awesome pigeon breeder who suggested we snap it's neck and chuck it in the garbage since it couldn't home properly. Superconsndar posted:Yeah, "responsible" rat breeders dump stock on rescues too. They just lie about it and/or fabricate stories about the origins of the rats they're dumping and dump them with rescues who won't recognize them. Thanks for letting me know where my surrenders are coming from! Actually, we don't generally get rats from breeders much at all. In this area, virtually all the pet breeders are doing fancy colors, hairless/rexes/double-rexes, and dumbos. >90% of our intakes are hooded, agouti, and PEWs -- which is coincidentally what the local pet stores and feeder breeders sell. Thinking back about rats that we have actually taken in, the most "exotic" ones have been a blue dumbo with some white blazing across the face, a mink girl, and a group of rats from a hoarder that were predominantly fawn hooded and incredibly inbred. I knew to ask the rattery mentioned above because the rats were blue dumbo rexes, and I'd otherwise never seen them around here. Superconsndar posted:Pet store rats are not "better" than breeder rats. They're all poo poo. The number of actually responsible rat breeders in the world can probably be counted on 2 hands. When I say "don't bother with a breeder" I'm not saying "because pet store rats are less lovely or likely to be unhealthy," I'm saying it because they're all about the same as far as the quality of what they produce and at least pet store suppliers aren't lying to the public about why the exist. Ok. I appreciate your opinion. I was offering a different one based on my experience dealing with local breeders and pet stores. I am sorry that it does not agree with yours. Superconsndar posted:I didn't have some big falling out with the rat community or anything, I quit because I realized that perpetuating the same hosed up show lines wasn't doing anyone any good and decided that I was going to stop breeding for color and start selecting exclusively for health. When this resulted in the color leaving my lines, other breeders lost interest in my rats...in spite of the fact that I was very quickly on the road to eliminating a lot of issues in those lines within just a few generations. I was unable to get new stock, because I no longer had breeding goals that meshed with anyone elses (burmese and black eyed siamese were brand new and all the rage, and I didn't care) so I decided to start testing uknown stock. The second I did that, I became a "byb" in the eyes of just about everyone. No one freaked, and they mostly left me alone because I was knowledgeable, but no one was interested in anything I was doing and without the support or interest of the community, you're not improving fancy rats as a whole and it's all pretty futile. That is unfortunately often the case in tightly knit communities of all animals. There's a certain "code" that is understood and if you step outside of it people don't want to work with you. Breeding unknowns is, in general, looked down upon in pretty much every species. It's not a rat thing -- if someone randomly started breeding mutts into English Bulldog lines, they wouldn't get praised for strengthening genetic diversity. Superconsndar posted:I got results fast enough when I stopped breeding for color that there is absolutely no way "responsible" rat breeders are doing any of the things they say they are as far as improving the health of rats as a whole. No way. The community is insane and full of poo poo and yes, I find it disheartening. Ok, I understand where you're coming from, but as I said, your experiences have not mirrored my own. I haven't seen any of my adopters that had breeder rats lose them particularly early (most of them also weren't particularly long lived, either, to be fair), nor have I seen them have any males with genetic aggression. The only pituitary tumor I personally have seen was in a baby PEW I grabbed out of the shelter with her sisters from unknown origin. (Confirmed by necropsy after she passed at around 4 months of age). I think it's important that you share your experiences, but really, the quality and ability of breeders is hugely varied (as they are in all species), and I think it's worthwhile for people to actually contact breeders in their area if they're interested in rats to see how these ratteries are run, rather than point blank painting them all as deranged, lying hoarders with tragically broken animals that are ticking time bombs. Re the Petco above: it's highly unusual for any large pet store to get locally from breeders, because, honestly, small scale breeders can't enter the kinds of contracts that these stores require. They have to be able to accept and refund and replace "broken" merchandise, and really only huge breeders have enough "stock" to replace broken merchandise. Rodent Mortician fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Oct 1, 2012 |
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Oct 1, 2012 02:36
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Superconsndar posted:...Yes, temperament being genetic was kind of my point. The breeders in your area may be working with lines that do not have temperament issues. The generalizations I am making refer to the rat fancy as a whole, not one local community. From what I have observed of thousands of rats both from feeder and show stock, barring genetic temperament issues, being handled from birth has the biggest effect on the final temperament of the rat. There are other modifying factors, but I have taken rats from show lines, dumped them in a tank and raised them as feeders, and they didn't tame down any better than a pet store rat...and vice versa. In general, breeder rats are more likely to be friendly by default, but the differences are minute and when they DO have temperament issues, I did not see breeders do anything to eliminate them. That's kind of been the entire point -- breeders vary widely from area to area, and I've been specifically stating that my knowledge is geographically appropriate and that I'm specifically not making broad and sweeping statements because things are hugely different in each area. Superconsndar posted:Again, you're speaking of the rat breeders in your area, not as a whole. Actually, because of the way genetics work, it is likely that even in the bluest, rexiest, dumboest litter in the world, a few standard black or PEW or beige or mink babies will be thrown- dumbo is a simple recessive, as is blue, and that's just gonna happen. You don't know that those boring PEWs and black hoodeds weren't the culls from someone blue dumbo litter, even if they changed hands first before coming to you. Am I saying that's DEFINITELY the case? No, but it's more common than you think to dump the "uglies" on rescues and pet stores. Most of them quietly get sent to pet stores and are never spoken of again. It must be pretty difficult to find a zillion friends to each dump two rats with me, staggering them at intervals and purchasing hundreds of dollars of junk from Petsmart to go with each pair. It's like rat Inception, man! We have to go deeper... seriously, I get what you're saying, but private surrenders are nearly always picked up at the surrendering person's house so that I can get the supplies too. Maybe they've got a supervillain lair with hidden other rats, but if they're willing to go that far then man, I'm willing to let them pretend. I understand it's common for unscrupulous breeders to dump animals at rescues. That's how I got my first set of 50 guinea pigs -- another rescue believed a breeder claiming to be a rescue. We get big groups of rabbits and hamsters that way too. We get at least 1-2 inquiries a week that are people who have bred animals trying to be cool about it and pretend like they just happen to need to get rid of their pets because they're moving to Zimbabwe or whatever. Oh, and they happen to be all PEWs and there are 10 and they're all 6 weeks old because they love PEWs. But as I said, it's extremely inefficient to dump individual pairs or trios of rats, all with complete habitats, from a different person each time. If they really wanted to dump them, they can just go down to the shelter and leave them in the overnight drop. I mean seriously, it's anonymous and free, and we pull from there anyway and advertise it heavily. Superconsndar posted:Okay? Not sure why you're getting defensive. I'm glad you've got some nice local breeders there. If only things were that way on a larger, national scale! I'm actually not that defensive, I'm just trying to understand your point of view. I understand you've dealt with many breeders across the nation, but realistically you're painting an entire group with very large brush strokes. Though you say that yours is a ~*~national~*~ viewpoint, realistically I'm in the southeast, and we are not the mecca of awesome animal husbandry. It could just be that actual halfway decent breeders don't get that involved in insane ratlady politics -- much like the halfway decent dog ladies. Superconsndar posted:Does your experience extend outside of one local/regional area? Again, I'm glad for you if you've got a b atch of good breeders in your area, but they're not the norm. Again, these things are often swep[t under the rug and kept hush hush and not documented even inside the community, so I'm not sure how you'd know. Unfortunately (or fortunately, I suppose), my direct experience is limited to the east coast corridor, although other rescues I've talked to across the country have typically had similar feelings on responsible breeders. Maybe we're all super special and just have great local breeders. It's actually an interesting dichotomy, because rat-only rescues tend to be very pro-responsible breeding, whereas mixed species rescues tend to be very anti-breeding in general, because climate of some individual species rescue communities is that there are no good breeders, and any breeding is bad. Superconsndar posted:And that is what I always tell people, to go for it and get a breeder rat if they want. I get rats from breeders occasionally when I want pretty colors. I just don't want anyone to be under the delusion that they're doing anything more than getting a pretty, well socialized rat when they get one from a breeder as opposed to anywhere else. Again, responsible breeders who actually walk the walk are about as common as unicorns. Yeah, that's the general consensus in virtually every species, it just seems so weird that it's such A Thing here. Maybe I have a kinder view since the other species I deal with it's nearly impossible to find responsible breeders. The "norm" for rabbit and guinea pig breeders in our area is to have them living out in a shed in bare metal cages, often giving terrible care advice, routinely dumping dozens of animals into the shelter and rescue system when they're overfull (or selling them to kids for $5 at the state fair), and often not even having a vet. So, like, a breeder who's huge problem is that she lied about Bluebell's real great-grandma doesn't set off the same alarms. Rodent Mortician fucked around with this message at 13:05 on Oct 1, 2012 |
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Oct 1, 2012 13:03
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Around here, they come in fairly frequently but how long they stay varies. I adopted a pair of fattie PEW guys a couple of weeks ago from another rescue that had been in rescue for over a year. In general, it seems like if the shelter has some of any kind of animal (ask me how I ended up with a dozen sugar gliders in my house ITT), other idiots with that animal start dumping them there because they realize they take them. Charlotte AC is constantly full of hamsters, rats, snakes, goats, you name it. The podunk shelters not as much because they either a.) outright refuse to take them because they don't have facilities or b.) hicks don't think about small furry things going to the shelter. We try to prioritize pulls by a.) weirdness, b.) podunkness of shelter, and then c.) whatever we know people are waiting to adopt.
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Oct 2, 2012 22:29
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Fraction posted:On another forum someone made a thread asking about a basic first aid/medical supplies kit for their rats, and I was wondering if anyone here had anything that they *always* have at hand for possible emergencies. I generally keep what I consider basic small animal stuff on hand. So like, a hospital cage (something small that can restrict movement and is one level), quik-stop, ivermectin, old socks (quick way to make a small animal "anti-chew" jacket), a bag of ringers with a t-set and some extra needles. I also generally have antibiotics of some type that I've got left over so that I can call the vet and have snuffly or gross rats start on meds. Fraction posted:Also lol someone on the forum has been told that they will not be allowed to get rats from a breeder because they... didn't want to give their home address out to an internet stranger. Rat ladies. An internet stranger as in a random user on the forum, or to the breeder? Because I'd be pretty shifty about letting pets of any kind go to someone that I don't even know where they live. Our rescue wouldn't adopt to someone who refused to give their home address to us.
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Oct 12, 2012 22:03
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My main opposition to culling is that you really then have no idea genetically what your lines are putting out, especially as the rats age. Granted, loss of one or two individuals isn't that significant, but some mouse breeders literally cull over half of each litter. At least with mice I can sort of understand it, because you basically have to keep all the males single, but you can generally put a big pile of male rats together in an appropriate sized cage. And if you can't, why are you breeding that line again anyway?
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Oct 15, 2012 22:15
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Superconsndar posted:RE: BEWs: yeah, all of the problems listed there can be waltzed right around by working with a different set of spotting genes. Way to go ratladies. If you're culling boring but healthy rats at a year how do you even begin to figure out what late-life problems you're either passing on or avoiding? I mean, I get that wheezing and respiratory issues are certainly to be avoided, but I think many people want to avoid things like tumors even if they onset at a year and a half of age. I actually find it kind of weird that you see so many rats locally that have respiratory problems, because overall the rats I'm tending to see around here are fairly stable when it comes to respiratory issues. I've had a fair amount of tumors (although lower than what you'd consider "average", and a lot of weird issues from the inbred groups. I'm trying to remember the ones I've had to dose, and there were two that I ended up keeping because their jerkface owners had basically neglected to treat them for their respiratory issues for months (and they had to stay on antibiotics and bronchiodialators basically their whole lives -- but still lived to be around 2), and one of my personal rats now that came into another rescue with severe respiratory problems. They dosed the heck out of her when she was a baby and she pulled through and hasn't had a problem since (she's around 1 now, but stayed very small). Fraction posted:That is a valid argument... but the rat ladies I've spoken to don't seem to even think of that. Several didn't agree that male mice should be housed singly, and it was even said that, 'if you neuter males they can live together!' I kind of get this, because they're essentially killing animals because they're hard to find homes for. It's not like they magically got hard to find homes for while the mice you had were pregnant, and it's not like mice magically started having tons of males in their litters overnight either. To me, responsible breeding involves having realistic expectations about what's going to happen and caring for those animals. It takes more time and more effort to try and find good homes for animals that are extraneous, and yeah that sucks, but in my mind it's just part of the deal. Rodent Mortician fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Oct 16, 2012 |
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Oct 16, 2012 00:42
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Because yes show mouse breeders breed mice with the intention of neutering a bunch of them. Yeah.
' then any actual, proper, structured argument.
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Superconsndar posted:Mycoplasmosis is carried by all rats aside from a few lab strains (yes, I'm sure you already know that) and all genetics really control is the immune system's ability to keep it in check and the propensity towards flareups. When you breed lovely rats with lovely immune systems on a large scale, you get more rats with more myco flareups which = chronic respiratory problems. What happened in my specific location was the Petsmart here getting rats from a really, really awful supplier for several years- that supplier had gorgeous rats that sparked a short rat ownership fad with everyone BYBing pretty rats, which they then gave to the local mom and pops, and Petco, and so on, until those genes were in everything and all of the local rats became a trash heap of breathing issues. They've since switched suppliers, but there's still enough of those lovely genes in the local population that everything seems to end up with crappy lungs. Generally it's just bad enough to diminish their lung capacity and keep them lethargic and full of goo in spite of antibiotics, but not enough to actually kill them and they live mostly normal lifespans if they're monitored well. This was a little over 10 years ago, and it actually got much better for a while- then a local breeder quit, dumped all of their stock on a few local stores, and it all got spread around and we're back to crap again. Retarded question -- if your local rat stock is so lovely, why don't you just make a day trip to somewhere that doesn't have the local genetic depression that's occurring there, rather than breeding 3,000 rats to try and get one that doesn't immediately explode into pneumonia and misery? Superconsndar posted:Like, I'm trying not to say this because i understand that you're all into rescue and have feelings and stuff, but a big part of the mindset is "it is a loving mouse and I'm breeding for pretty colors. Lol bye." When I cull my mouse litters, I'm not doing it because there's ~no way I could find homes,~ I'm doing it because mice are stupid as hell and lovely parents and do better with smaller litters. I don't want/need 1000 males, I only want pretty colors and markings and don't need the ugly ones, and they are mice and I really don't care a whole lot about spending real life time finding them homes. If people do, that's great, but it isn't a priority for everyone. Breeding pretty mouse colors is a hobby injected into my production of feeder mice to feed some of my pets and let my dogs chase, spending time finding responsible homes for my culls is just lol. Yeah, being a rescuer doesn't automatically mean I want to save every furbaby always and live in a big rainbow house full of homeless mice. Some animals are just difficult to home. We very rarely pull mice from the shelter because it is difficult to find them homes, and they're just loving always pregnant and then I've got a zillion mice in my house forever. So like, I get it. My personal opinion is just that if you make animals, you're responsible for them, and killing them off because 'lol i ain't got time to look for homes yo i got more mices to make' isn't particularly responsible. And when I bring this up to some of these show breeders, all I get is a lot of whining about how hard it is to find homes for male mice, and how mice are lovely parents, and how nobody wants a PEW, etc. It's just hard for me to have much sympathy because these problems all existed before anybody decided they needed to make a bunch of mice as a hobby. Just like mice being difficult to find homes for in rescue was hard before I brought the load of pregnant mice into my house. Fraction posted:You gotta bear in mind that, as Super said, mice are loving idiotic mothers. Plus, most of the breeders that carry on past a couple of litters/are culling/etc are show breeders. They churn out probably a dozen litters or more a year, trying to make the prettiest xyz variety mouse. Mice really don't sell well, so many of them don't even bother advertising. Yeah I mean I get it. Part of my day job actually involves working with lab mice and rats in a limited capacity. (Where we funnily enough have the opposite problem and go through retarded lengths to try and keep mice litters alive -- nothing like lab techs running cross building with little containers of pee trying to douse pinkies to see if a foster mom will take them). And I do small animal rescue, and it sucks to pull mice and they're difficult to home. Pretty much anything not a dog or a cat can be difficult to find homes for. It's a difficult situation, but again I just don't have much sympathy because a.) it's a hobby and b.) these factors existed before they entered the hobby. At the end of the day, I'm just spergin' about rodents and everyone is going to do their own thing anyway. Rodent Mortician fucked around with this message at 10:17 on Oct 16, 2012 |
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Oct 16, 2012 09:30
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m0rrin posted:I asked my rat lady friends and they said "Silvered Berkshire Possum" and "berkshire with possum blaze". Possom-face! P-p-p-p-possum face, p-p-p-possum face.
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Oct 18, 2012 14:39
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Invalid Octopus posted:I'm sooo excited to be getting a little baby boy rat in a few months. BUT when my bf emailed the vet asking when he would be willing to neuter, the email he got back from the receptionist just said "As long as the testicles have descended 4 months." I know ratballs generally descend around 4 weeks, which is when a lot of vets are willing to neuter, so I'm hoping that the receptionist just misheard or that the vet will be able to be convinced to do it sooner. The breeder's willing to hold onto him as long as we need (so that he can keep getting rat company), but it'd be a serious bummer if he couldn't come home until 4 months. I was expecting more like two =\ I think it's more of a rat size thing. Our vet always liked them to be a little older and bigger too. But yay rat boy!
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Jan 9, 2013 20:13
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Invalid Octopus posted:Yeah I can, I'd just prefer not to. I have an extra cage he'll have to be in for a week or so after surgery anyway. But if he's with the breeder he'll be hanging out with rat bros and that's obviously the nicer thing to do, rather than keep him isolated for months. Here's hoping the vet is willing to be flexible on the age, though. Only solution is two boys rats so they have company until they're snipped. 
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Jan 10, 2013 18:55
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Fraction posted:In my experience, rats don't behave the same way in neutral environments that they do when in a cage, especially their cage. I've introduced/been part of intros for a bunch of rats (adult males, babies to adult males, babies to adult females) and everyone is always absolutely fine and happy until they go in the cage. The only issues I've had we're between two very assertive/aggressive adult males, and the weird thing between my Panda and my other girls which was fine when I introduced her again. I generally recommend starting in a neutral area because if there is going to be a serious huge throwdown, it's easier to get them apart if you can actually reach them. When I've put the jerks together, they inevitably picked the further corner of the cage in the most inaccessible nook to have WWIII in. At least when they duke it out in the tub I can get at them.
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Feb 14, 2013 15:28
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Big Bug Hug posted:Aww don't take it personally. It really does sound like a nightmare. I've seen them twitching their little toes and noses, who knows they could be dreaming. She didn't mean it! I have also never known a rat that could resist biting a toe that was in a sock. It's the damnedest thing.
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Apr 25, 2013 12:25
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Jack Trades posted:My rats got a lice infection. Rats groom their whole bodies with their tongues. I can't imagine a scenario where one could apply a topical medication to a rat and have it not be ingested at least a little. If you can't get ivermectin, Revolution (selamectin) also works.
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Jan 3, 2014 17:55
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