Rat Care

The LittleOnes' abode: a big (90cm x 55cm x 72cm, or about 3' x 2' x 2.5') white chinchilla cage with two shelves and ramps.

We fed our rats mostly on Altromin Rat & Mouse Pellets, aka lab blocks, and Reggie Rat Food by Supreme Petfoods. They also got vegetables, fruit, bread, müsli, yoghurt drops, cheese, and so on. They lived in a big chinchilla cage with paper-based cat litter (Toa-Lätt) or aspen chips as litter and a lot of things to play with or hide/sleep in. They got out a few times a day to play with us and run around.

Vet Visits

In January '98, we took the boys to the vet because they had scabs. We had thought it was from too much protein in their diet, but it turned out that they had mites (Cheyletiella, or walking dandruff). The vet gave them an injection of something called Ivomec. We rubbed it on their fur, too. After a couple of weeks and another shot of Ivomec, we finally got rid of the mites. The ratties were weighed at the vet's. Nuutti weighed 570g (20.1 oz) and Jörkki 580g (20.5 oz). The LittleOnes weren't so little anymore...

On our second visit to the vet, she prescribed the boys some antibiotics and vitamins, because they had been sneezing a lot and had porphyrin staining around their eyes and nose. The name of the antibiotics was Synulox. We gave each rat half a tablet (crushed and mixed in jam) twice a day for ten days, after which the symptoms were almost gone. We also gave them a two-week course of vitamins (Tehovitol, ten drops once a day) - we put the drops on pieces of bread, which they ate up quite willingly. From then on, we gave them vitamins once a week, as the vet suggested.

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