Is this pet store antibiotic okay for our new baby rats?

Sat Feb 11, 2006 2:31 am

We had been seriously considering buying baby rats from a local breeder when an impromptu visit to the mall resulted in us buying 2 baby rats at the pet store. We hadn't planned on buying them there, but our little girls fell in love with 2 adorable baby rats, so we bought them. Now they are constantly sneezing, sometimes having sneezing fits. They have aspen bedding and I clean the cage twice a week. I am worried about Myco after reading about it here, but my husband says finances are tight and we can't afford an expensive visit to the vet. My husband drives an hour one way to work everyday, which wasn't too bad until gas prices more than doubled. Now our gasoline bills and heating/cooling bills are eating us alive. Most of the vets around here are very pricey and there are no rat friendly vets on your list near us. In fact there is only one listed in our entire state.

But we love our new rat babies and are very attached to them. So I called the pet store to see if they had any health guarantee on the rats. I was hoping they might give me some antibiotics for the rats since we've only had them about 3 weeks now and they were sneezing a little when we first got them. They offered no health guarantee but said that I could purchase antibiotics for the rats there at the store for only $7.29. I went ahead and purchased the antibiotics but am concerned since the package is labeled as treatment for "respiratory diseases of pet birds." The woman told me that they use it on the rats all the time and it works well. The medicine is called "Ornacyn-Plus" and is a broad spectrum antibiotic called erythromycin. It also contains essential vitamins and amino acids to help with diarrhea and vitamin deficiencies. You take the tablets and dissolve them in the rats drinking water daily.

What do you think of this anibiotic, is it okay? Has anyone else ever used this type of medicine on a sick rat? I hope everything works out since our little rats are very precious to us. They already climb into our hands when we open the cage door and love to cuddle and lick us.

Sat Feb 11, 2006 3:06 am

Erythomycin is actually fine for use with rats, and is one of the few that is actually effective against mycoplasma itself... however, giving it in the water is not the best way to go - you can't guarantee that they'll get a good dose and in most cases, the levels mean they'd have to drink the entire bottle a day to get close to an effective dose - but giving it stronger in the water would make the taste so bad they would refuse to drink.

It's also not recommended to do this - just in case it's something else that needs different treatment (for example, heart problems, neurological problems, tumours etc can all cause respiratory problems, as well as allergies and environmental factors) and you'll need to consider what you will be able to do in the future with regards to vet treatment. That said, these might be usable in this case, if you really can't get them to the vets now. Try the RMCA vet list as well, as it's much larger. You can also ring around the local vets and ask them if they will see rats - the lists aren't comprehensive, and are simply recommendations from other members. You could also, perhaps, contact the breeder near you and ask what vet he/she sees.

Do you have there the ingredients - does it give you, per tablet, how much erythromycin is in the tablet, along with the amounts of vitamins etc? If you can give me that, as well as the weight of your rats, then I can work out if you could perhaps crush up and dissolve part of a tablet in water or mix with a small amount of treat to give them orally.

Let me know what the packet says and how much your new ratlets weigh, and we'll see if we can figure this out.

_________________
Andy & The Rats

~ Darwin ~ Maisie ~ Ella ~ Zak ~

~ Finn ~ Malachi ~ Azrael ~ Newton ~ Charlie ~

Sat Feb 11, 2006 3:38 am

You're right, I really need to call around and find a good reasonably priced vet. There is a teacher at my kids school that takes her pet rats to school with her. If the kindergarteners behave themselves they are rewarded with playtime with the rats which has worked wonders in her classroom. She also breeds rats and was the person we originally planned on buying our rats from. But it's Friday and there is no school today since we live in Texas and never used our snow days we had set aside, so this day off is just a freebie. And I hate to wait until Monday after school to approach the teacher about my sneezy rats, they could get much worse by then. But you are correct, we do need to locate a good reliable vet . I am sure our financial situation will be better in a little while. I am a muralist and business is slow this time of year when Christmas and all of the big holidays are over. But come this summer, things will pick up again like they usually do. We just need to be careful moneywise until then.

Thanks for the offer of help, I REALLY appreciate it! Here is the info. on the back of the box:
29 mg erythromycin activity
vitamin B1 - 1mg
vitamin B2 - 1 mg
vitamin B6 -1 mg
vitamin B12- .010 mg
niacin- .05 mg

Our babies are 2 months old and they're girls, but I don't know their exact weight. I put them on our dietetic scales that I use to weigh food and it showed them both to be about 100 grams each. I don't know how accurate these scales are since they're sitting at 100 grams instead of 0 grams. But when I put muffin and cuddles on, each of them went from 100 grams to 200 grams. I hope this helps.

Thanks for the quick response Little Willow, I really appreciate it and I look forward to talking to you again. This website is a lifesaver.

Sat Feb 11, 2006 5:21 am

OK around 100g is more usual for 5-6 weeks, but there's a reasonable range with antibiotics. The main concern would be that in giving the tablet, you'd overdose with vitamins, depending on the concentrations in each tablet to the amount of antibiotic - but we'll get to that.

The usual dosage for rats is 10 to 20mg per Kg of rat. So you want to give your girls 1-2mg each, three times a day. So perhaps dividing that tablet into 24 would be the best plan. I don't know how big the tablet is though, so I don't know how easy it would be to divide it. If you can quarter it, then each quarter will provide you 6 doses - enough for three doses for both of the girls for 24 hours. You can then crush the powder up and either dissolve it in a little water to give orally, or mix it with something tasty (like Ferretvite, Nutrical, applesauce, coolwhip, chocolate sauce, baby food, cooked oatmeal etc. - there are lots of suggestions if you do a search through the forums for more ideas) to hide the flavour of the meds. If you do mix it with water, try not to use too much. Do you have any needleless syringes at home with you? Something you can measure out small volumes of liquid?

If you do, then perhaps mix it with enough water to make it up to 0.6mls (which means, you then give each girl 0.1ml of solution three times a day). If you don't, it's probably easiest to either divide the powder into 6 little piles and mix it fresh into a product, or mix it all into something tasty and keep it in the fridge (as you should with the water mix) between doses.

Re: the vitamins. Rats have the following RDAs in mg/kg:
B1 - 4
B2 - 3
B6 - 6
B12 - 0.05
Niacin - 15
They're all water soluble vitamins, so you're unlikely to see any problems overdosing them with these vitamins, but it's not recommended as some issues have potentially been associated with super high doses. However, they'd only be getting a tiny amount of their RDAs per tiny tablet part, so it shouldn't be a problem.

If you can't do this, then it has been mentioned that some people (though it's not recommended to give medicines in drinking water) suggest using half to 1 tablet in 2 fluid oz of water (58mls) made up freshly each day - that would give 0.25 to 0.5mg/ml solution. A rat normally drinks 8-11mls of water per 100g of body weight. If your girls were to drink this solution at the expected rate, they would be getting 2-4mg of erythromycin over a day (which is an appropriate dose for them). However, as stated before, many things can affect their drinking - heat, cold, illness, individual rat metabolism, taste of the water, fluid sources in the rest of their diet etc. If they drink more or less of the water, then they're going to get a lower or higher dose than they should, plus, of course, you waste a lot of the product if you are throwing away most of the solution each day. You should also offer fresh water alongside this solution in case they hate the taste - because otherwise they will go without and become dehydrated.

Hope that helps - if you can do it with oral dosing, please do - it's more accurate - and persist for at least 14 days with treatment. Aspen has, in some cases, caused sneezing and other allergy symptoms in some rats (and humans) though, so it's possible that their symptoms aren't down to an infection, but could be simply a sensitivity to something around them - smoke, room sprays, candles, scents, incense, dust, pollen, strong drafts stirring up any dust etc, mold spores from air conditioning etc. So while you're treating them with antibiotics, bear in mind that it might be that they need a change of their enviroment (such as a different litter). You can test if the litter is a problem by putting newspaper or even tissue paper in their cage instead of the aspen for a couple of days. If the aspen is a problem, then hopefully their sneezing would ease off while they were on the paper (though you would need to change it every day as it's not very absorbant).

_________________
Andy & The Rats

~ Darwin ~ Maisie ~ Ella ~ Zak ~

~ Finn ~ Malachi ~ Azrael ~ Newton ~ Charlie ~

Sat Feb 11, 2006 9:29 am

Thanks for the info. on the medicine dosage. My biggest fear was the same as yours, that they weren't getting enough medicine via the water method. But I didn't know how to go about figuring out how much was the right amount for each of my girls.

We don't smoke, use candles, spray scents of any sort, and I am a neat freak so I would be shocked to find any dust around the house. They're in our spare bedroom and I've put a small space heater in there on low to keep the room a little warmer for them since their so small. When we first got our girls we used pine scented cedar which had them sneezing up a storm. We quickly changed to aspen after checking out this website. The sneezing stopped after the litter change and they sounded great until the family got an upper respiratory infection. We had played with them constantly thinking that we were suffering from allergies which unfortunately runs in the family. By the time we realized we were sick, the rats had sadly been exposed to our illness. I was on Biaxin for over a week with infected tonsils, infected sinuses and strep throat. It was all of the doctor's bills and antibiotic bills for the whole family that put a strain on us financially. That's why we think the rats are sick with an infection, because we were sick from an infection ourselves.

I feel terrible that we might have gotten our babies sick, and if they don't start getting better on this medicine I won't hesitate to find a good vet for them. I'm just looking for something to hold us over for the weekend at this point. I'm hoping they'll look and feel better by monday after a few days on antibiotics. I'll keep you posted on their progress, thanks again for the help and quick respones, I really appreciate it. By the way, their only symptoms at this point is lots of sneezing, sometimes having sneezing fits. And they are a little stuffed up and make snuffly noises sometimes. Otherwise they seem fine and run, eat, and play like they normally do.

Sat Feb 11, 2006 10:20 am

Chances are it's nothing you've given them. Cold viruses aren't going to infect rats, nor are most viral "cold" diseases. Strep throat doesn't cause respiratory disease in rats (though technically if you were to go licking them while you had it, and they had an open scratch, you could cause a skin infection). There are a few bacteria that can be carried by humans and cause ratty illness, but chances are it's unrelated - so hopefully that can ease your mind a bit.

Respiratory problems can come on at any point, with no obvious cause - simply because if it is myco related, it's going to be lurking in their nose, throats and lungs constantly, waiting for something to let it flare up - be that allergies, the irritation from pine and cedar litter, dirty cages (the ammonia does it), stress, other diseases, poor diet etc - but sometimes even the stress of moving in can do it. It might have been that the combination of the softwood litter and the move was enough to start them off. Sometimes, with the respiratory problems, the symptoms can come and go - some days they're stuffy and sneeze, and other days they're ok, only for it to recur again in a few days or weeks. It's a pain in the backside!

Hopefully, because they're only sneezing, snuffling and snorky but are otherwise doing ok, it will respond quite quickly. Even if the symptoms disappear completely, be sure to keep up the treatment for at least 14 days. I do understand that things happen, and money can get short - it happens to many people. As long as you can have a plan in place for the future, that's the main thing, and now you've got a few places to also look at to prepare. One other thing, if you do a search back, there is a credit card that is specifically designed for emergency pet care in the US - I can't think of the name off the top of my head now but that might be an option. I think it had a good interest rate, and is accepted by many vets. Perhaps that might be a backup option for a last resort - though I certainly know that the last thing you want when money is short is to be spending what you don't have. Confused

Dust - even in the most spotless of households, there's going to be some dust and dust mites and dust mite dropping around - it doesn't mean you're not keeping it clean (and that certainly wasn't what I was suggesting!) but sometimes even tiny amounts of dust and the mites' droppings can trigger off allergy symptoms. The fact that you keep the place very clean helps a lot, but it's one of those things you can never eradicate completely - I wish you could because I'm allergic to house dust and even with mattress covers, pillow and duvet allergy covers, blinds instead of curtains, hard floors instead of carpet etc, I've still found it impossible to eradicate completely my allergy symptoms - though all of those steps help in some way.

You could try a humidifier, a bowl of hot water near the cage (but so they can't tip it up or scald on the water or steam) or take them into a steamy bathroom after a shower has been running etc - that can help clear congestion, which can make them feel a bit more comfortable as well. Some people try a little eucalyptus, Vicks, Karvol or other decongestant product - either in hot water or on a tissue near the cage (where they can't pull it in). That might help as well.

_________________
Andy & The Rats

~ Darwin ~ Maisie ~ Ella ~ Zak ~

~ Finn ~ Malachi ~ Azrael ~ Newton ~ Charlie ~

Mon Feb 13, 2006 8:07 am

Wow, I feel so much better! I've been feeling terribly guilty ever since the rats got sick because I thought I had caused it by being around them when I was sick. Starting out with the pine scented cedar litter right after a sudden move to a new home could well be the culprit. I wish I had known not to use that stuff. They only had it for a few days, but that may have been all that was needed to trigger an illness.

I have one more problem that maybe you could help me with. I keep catching my kids giving the rats fruit loops, frosted flakes, pudding, and other sugary treats. They have been doing this on a daily basis despite me warning them to not give the rats too much. They only give them a couple fruit loops or a couple pieces of cereal and the pudding is just a teaspoonful. But my concern is that they give them these treats on a daily basis. Is that not good for them? I have a bag of healthy fruit and nut treats that is made for small animals which I have been encouraging the kids to give the rats instead of the other stuff. But how many treats should they have daily and could this be affecting their health?

Mon Feb 13, 2006 8:28 am

Aye - it doesn't take much to trigger it off but the main thing is that they're off it now - the real harm comes if they're left on it, because even if it doesn't cause immediate symptoms and sniffles, it can continue irritating sensitive tissues and causing potentially more long term problems.

Sugary or fatty treats should be limited definitely - too much sugar will cause the same kinds of problems it does in humans - it makes them fat, it can cause cavities and it fills them up on that rather than healthy, nutrient rich foods. Similarly, fatty foods also cause weight gain, and too much weight also increases the risk of heart and related problems. Of course, we all tend to give in - my rats always get cake on their birthdays, and sometimes I let them have a chip (french fry) or whatever... but generally try and keep them down. I tend to work on one or two small treats a day - a couple of yoghurt drops (the small ones like chocolate chips) or a couple of cheerios. Do try and persuade your daughters to stick to healthier things - a spoonful of pudding to a rat is like us eating a big bowl full! So the odd fruit loop or frostie won't kill them, but giving all of them multiple times a day isn't a good idea. If they like giving treats, try and persuade them that ratties are just as happy with fruits and veg as treats - so giving them a frozen pea or a nugget of sweetcorn, or a piece of apple or a grape will suffice them just as well, and will count towards their "fresh quota" a day.

_________________
Andy & The Rats

~ Darwin ~ Maisie ~ Ella ~ Zak ~

~ Finn ~ Malachi ~ Azrael ~ Newton ~ Charlie ~

Mon Feb 13, 2006 8:47 am

I'm going to print a copy of your reply and show it to the girls. If they realize that all of that sugary stuff may make the rats sick or even shorten the rats lives, that will do the trick. They wouldn't want to do anything to harm their rats, they're family now. Our rats don't seem to like apples or fruit very much, but they do loves sunflower seeds, carrot sticks, and yogurt drops. I think I'll stock up on that type of stuff and make sure it's handy. Thanks for the tip.

Mon Feb 13, 2006 9:11 am

Sunflower seeds are quite fatty and high in protein, as are most nuts and seeds, so not too many of those. wink

_________________
Andy & The Rats

~ Darwin ~ Maisie ~ Ella ~ Zak ~

~ Finn ~ Malachi ~ Azrael ~ Newton ~ Charlie ~