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24th August 2005 Respiratory disease is a horrible disease, and one of the most common causes of death in pet rats. While we certainly do not profess to be vets, we have had lots of experience of dealing with this 'curse'.
BEDDING: The type of bedding that your rat is on could be causing a problem. NEVER use woodshavings or sawdust, nor anything ‘scented’. Dusty products like woodshavings can be breathed in and irritate the lungs and scented products – particularly pine – can do the same. If you use sawdust or wood shavings in their cage, stop using it and switch to a safe product such as paper based cat litter – Biocatolet or Bob Martins - or a cardboard bedding such as we use from Ecopetbed. TREATMENT Some vets recommend putting antibiotics in the rat's drinking water. However, you cannot guarantee that the rat will get enough of the antibiotic in their system this way, and as it is watered down, it does lose it's potency. Also, rats do 'pee' a lot, so the antibiotics will move through their system too fast to do a lot of good. First of all, check out your rat’s environment. Rats are susceptible to draughts, direct sunlight, and smells. Their cage should be somewhere airy, but not close to a radiator as the heat can dry out their lungs, causing - or exacerbating - respiratory problems. While the room should be humid, the cage should not be in a room where washing is dried. The right temperature for a ratty is ideally around 21 degrees (around 70) and we recommend you place a fresh bowl of water next to their cage to increase humidity. Medication-wise, we administer 0.3ml of 2.5% oral baytril twice a day to the affected adult rat, (for smaller rats, we use 0.2ml) either via syringe or, if they refuse or get stressed, we syringe it into a small piece of bread, cheese, jam or similar. (Anything to mask the taste). We also add a generous pinch of bisolvon - a powder mucus-fighting drug - to their food twice a day. This we do twice day for a week. We normally see an improvement after 3-5 days. If after seven days there is no obvious improvement, after getting the rat checked over by the vet again, we take one of three avenues: Treatment 1 We use this combination of drugs for at least three weeks. We have had great success in controlling respiratory problems in rats with this and currently have 12 rats on this permanently:
Treatment 2 In 2003 we also started using a drug called Zithromax Suspension. (Your vet will need to calculate the measurements for you. as to make it up, you mix the powder with water). We have used it two different ways...for a short-term case, you administer 0.3ml of the mixture once a day, orally, for three days, then it stays in the system for up to 10 days, attacking the bacteria. For long term treatment, we administer 0.2ml once a day for 20 days. One of our rats, George, showed a vast improvement on using this method, his weight increasing by 25% in just over a month and the other symptoms lessening drastically! Treatment 3 We get the rat’s chest x-rayed. This will confirm what is actually going on inside the rat and in most cases, it will be respiratory disease. However, we have had instances where the symptoms – normally lethargy and a rattly or unusual sound when breathing – have actually been something else. Doris came to with her sister and was a year old rat whose breathing was very noisy. When baytril didn’t work, we had her x-rayed which showed a lung tumour. While we couldn’t actually treat the tumour, we knew then what we were dealing with so made her as comfortable and happy as possible. She lived another 6 months. Kolin was a tiny rat in a pet shop when we saw him. He was hunched over, breathing heavily and when you got him out, he just sat there (definitely not normal for a 6 week old rat). An x-ray showed a tumour in his thymus (which is situated in the neck area and plays an important role in the development of the immune system). Our vet’s prognosis wasn’t good, but we started Kolin on a course of prednisolone as well as keeping a close eye on him for infections as his immune system wasn’t obviously working well. Kolin is now 22 months old and while another tumour has now developed under his back leg that cannot be removed, he is still thriving. Lisa and Sabe also had this condition which is not so uncommon in rats. Sadly, Lisa only lived to 4 months old, but Sabe went on to aged 3½, being put to sleep after suffering a severe stroke. We are firm advocates of having rats x-rayed as it gives us a good basis on which treatments and medications to use. Treatment 4 If the vet agrees – as each rat is different and nebulising may have an adverse affect on them - we nebulise the rat. Depending on the severity of the problem, we start off 3 - 4 times a day for the first three days, dropping down to 2 - 3 times for another four if there are signs of improvement. By putting them into a nebulising chamber, they are breathing in ONLY the treatment, meaning it can get right into the system and, hopefully, deal with the problem. We use 4ml of 2.5% injectable baytril with 10ml of water. For a more aggressive treatment, we use .05ml of Tylan (a drug used to treat a similar bacteria in birds) with 10ml of water. However, it should be noted that while we have used this treatment for the last three years, recent studies in the States show that while nebulising does get the drugs deep into the system, it only goes so far internally. These studies suggest that even using saline on its own is just as good as it moistens the lungs. Complementary medication There are other drugs that we have used along side the various treatments such as:
CASE STUDIES Nebulising: Otis, a big, brown 9 month old rat who suddenly developed a severe respiratory infection that antibiotics could not shift. You could hear him 'rattling' from the room next door and we genuinely believed we would lose him. At the same time our wonderful vet put Otis on his nebuliser 3 times a day for a week. Otis went on to live to the ripe old age of 2½ years, having sporadic reoccurrences of slight respiratory problems. This we treated with oral medication. Oral Baytril administered by mouth or in the food: Kojak, Luther, Stripe...our list of rats who we have successfully treated this way goes on and on. (Remember, we run a rescue so have rats coming out of our ears!) As soon as a rat shows symptoms of respiratory disease, we start them on a course of oral baytril. In 80% of these cases, after a week on antibiotics, no further treatment is needed. The other 20% go on to have alternative treatments and medicines. Marbocyl and ronaxan combination: Hutch came to us aged 9 weeks old and severely ill with respiratory problems. X-rays showed cloudy, unhealthy lungs. After 3 months of the above combination, his symptoms disappeared! Like Otis, he had reoccurrences of the disease throughout his life and he went straight back onto the medication when this happened. We recently lost Hutch aged 28 months due to fluid around his lungs but he really could not have had a fuller, happier life if it wasn’t for the drugs. Roland came to us in January 2005 aged 4 months, underweight and hardly moving as he was so breathless. An x-ray showed just one lung was working – the other was so severely scarred due to respiratory problems that it was useless. Seven months on he is a confident, chunky little rat who can keep up with his brother Baldrick racing around the place. He is on the marbocyl/ronanxan combination with a low dose of prednisolone. SUMMARY: We hope this has helped. While we have given doses for medications and names of drugs, these are for you to discuss with your vet and never to be tried out without consulting your vet first. It may also give him or her other ideas on treating this nasty disease. It is no way intended to undermine your vet's recommendations for treatment or expertise..these are just different ideas that they may find helpful. CavyRescue, 28 July 2005 ABOUT CAVYRESCUE (Registered charity number pending) CavyRescue is a small animal shelter and is run by Jason and Stella Hulott. They rescue, rehabilitate and rehome all ‘small furries’, specialising in rats. The aim is to not only rescue and rehome these ‘small furries’, but to educate people and pet-related organisations on animal healthcare and welfare. The shelter is entirely self-funded and in its six years of operation has rehomed nearly 1,600 animals via the shelter; working with other independent rodent rescues; and its website
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