Hey guys,
I know this isn't the right place, but seems to me that no one thinks to check the rat breeding forum and I'm in major need of help here.
I was out cleaning my rat tubs today and noticed that one of my male rats had crazy infections on his feet. I put him in with the females a week ago and when I first put him in they were kind of fighting, but nothing strange seemed just like typical showing of dominance and things like that all though it was aggressive enough to catch my attention I didn't really find it weird.
I went out tonight to clean cages and swap males and noticed that my breeder had sores or infections on his rear feet. I ended up gassing him to put him out of his misery. Plus he's been struggling with myco symptoms lately and he's over a year old so I figured it was time for him to get some rest.
But to further my knowledge and save my colony in the future, if this happens again, I'd like to figure out what this is and then at the end I'll add my theory of what happened. He had sores/infections on his feet is the best way to describe it.
My care: I keep my rats in Large Rat breeder tubs, the commercial kind bought from Big Apple Herp. I keep two females per tub and rotate my males through the females. I use Care Fresh Bedding. Feed and water every two days as needed and every sunday/monday I dump all the bedding in the tub and completely clean the tub out with lysol all in one cleaner. I keep them in a room in my garage that stays in between 60 and 70 degrees. I feed a diet of home mixed food with a recipe I found on a rat care website that consists of Dog Food, Rat Food, Banana Chips, Garden Pasta, Total Cereal, Puffed Rice, and Puffed Wheat. I've read that this is a better diet than commercially bought rat food because he gives them the higher protein content and ensures that they get all the vitamins they need. I do not supplement with liquid vitamins.
My Theory: I was keeping one rat per tub the week prior with one tub of two per tub. I found through the experiment that two rats per tub actually work out better because the two females work with each other to care for both litters. Instead of being separate litters it's like one big litter with two moms and the mothers ended up being healthier than the tubs with just one mother, where at the end of the raising the mothers seemed to look worn out. Anyway one of the single mothers had a litter a few days before we decided to put two per tub in all tubs, but I didn't think anything of it because the other tubs with two mothers seemed to be doing so well with the litters. Anyway when we introduced the second female and a breeder male to that tub there was a short burst of dominance struggle, but I figured that may happen since a pregnant or nursing female rat is always the leader of a colony. I figured everything would be fine. I think that I was wrong and there was a lot of fighting going on in that tub. Also with the fight for dominance that cage seemed to get dirtier than the rest I'm guessing because of marking. I think that between the fighting and open wounds the male got a lot of infected wounds.
The thing that makes me wonder: The female that did not have a litter in that tub also has some of the same marks on her rear feet which means one of two things. A
she got injured from the fighting as well. In which case I need to figure out a way to keep this from happening again. or B something else happened and there is some sort of disease that may possibly be plaguing my colony. In which case I need to figure out how to fix whatever it is.
Question: Is my theory right on the infected wounds or is there something else going on in my colonies? I would like to know what you guys think and how I can fix whatever is going on in my rat tubs.
Thanks Everyone for the help,
Mike
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