Hey!
Yesterday I arrived home to find that one of my rats, a 2yr 7month old female had died. She was the healthiest and most energetic of my rats (most of whom are starting to slow down and one of which has an inoperable tumour). She was lying with her head over the side of the entrance to one of her huts. There was no sign of having choked, no cuts or obvious injuries.
The only thing wrong was that there was some blood on her hind legs (not much) as though she'd bled either rectally or vaginally. One of her eyes also looked a bit jellied, in comparison with the other, but that may simply have been one of the other rats chewing it or maybe it was just something that happened post mortem.
Due to feeding issues while I'm not home (I have to feed several of my sick rats soft/fatty foods) I separate my CN. Dingo was alone with my rat Delilah, who is also fairly healthy.
When I was cleaning out the cage, I found some blood-stained bedding in the litter in the upstairs portion of the cage (where Dingo hadn't been). There wasn't much, but it had me concerned. Today while I had the rats out, I noticed there was blood on top of several things they'd climbed on, but I have no idea which rat was bleeding, as none of them had cuts or staining on their fur at all.
They do tend to get a bit quiet fairly quickly these days, due to old age, but Dotty and Delilah (two otherwise active rats) became quiet very suddenly and went to lie down. I noticed there was some blood on the white hammock Delilah chose to nap it (again, a very, very tiny amount, but fresh). I've examined her several times, only finding a bit of discolouration on some fur around her vaginal/rectal area.
I checked on the ratshack first to see if I could find anything, and ran into a thread on SDA, which mentioned the rats bleeding rectally before they died. I noticed some of the symptoms were to do with porphyrin staining around the eyes, etc.
Last week I took four of my rats (Webster, Chloe, Lola and Dotty) to the vet. Dotty had two cysts and a mammary tumour removed, Lola was perfectly fine, Webster was diagnosed with PT and Chloe has an inoperable mass in her abdomen and I was told just to keep her comfortable.
One of Chloe's symptoms has been an occasionally porphyrin -stained eye, which was bulging a bit today. It's an off-and-on thing and made me think she had PT as well (this is actually what I thought she had when I brought her to the vet, but he said even if she did have it she would die of the abdominal mass before it happened).
I'm now super-paranoid that my rats may have SDA, but I wanted to check here first. I touched them to make sure they weren't cold, which they weren't. This morning two of them were sneezing though. Webster has had a poor respiratory system throughout this whole ordeal with PT, but is taking baytril.
Should I be concerned about SDA or are these are likely to do with my ratties' other illnesses??
Yesterday I arrived home to find that one of my rats, a 2yr 7month old female had died. She was the healthiest and most energetic of my rats (most of whom are starting to slow down and one of which has an inoperable tumour). She was lying with her head over the side of the entrance to one of her huts. There was no sign of having choked, no cuts or obvious injuries.
The only thing wrong was that there was some blood on her hind legs (not much) as though she'd bled either rectally or vaginally. One of her eyes also looked a bit jellied, in comparison with the other, but that may simply have been one of the other rats chewing it or maybe it was just something that happened post mortem.
Due to feeding issues while I'm not home (I have to feed several of my sick rats soft/fatty foods) I separate my CN. Dingo was alone with my rat Delilah, who is also fairly healthy.
When I was cleaning out the cage, I found some blood-stained bedding in the litter in the upstairs portion of the cage (where Dingo hadn't been). There wasn't much, but it had me concerned. Today while I had the rats out, I noticed there was blood on top of several things they'd climbed on, but I have no idea which rat was bleeding, as none of them had cuts or staining on their fur at all.
They do tend to get a bit quiet fairly quickly these days, due to old age, but Dotty and Delilah (two otherwise active rats) became quiet very suddenly and went to lie down. I noticed there was some blood on the white hammock Delilah chose to nap it (again, a very, very tiny amount, but fresh). I've examined her several times, only finding a bit of discolouration on some fur around her vaginal/rectal area.
I checked on the ratshack first to see if I could find anything, and ran into a thread on SDA, which mentioned the rats bleeding rectally before they died. I noticed some of the symptoms were to do with porphyrin staining around the eyes, etc.
Last week I took four of my rats (Webster, Chloe, Lola and Dotty) to the vet. Dotty had two cysts and a mammary tumour removed, Lola was perfectly fine, Webster was diagnosed with PT and Chloe has an inoperable mass in her abdomen and I was told just to keep her comfortable.
One of Chloe's symptoms has been an occasionally porphyrin -stained eye, which was bulging a bit today. It's an off-and-on thing and made me think she had PT as well (this is actually what I thought she had when I brought her to the vet, but he said even if she did have it she would die of the abdominal mass before it happened).
I'm now super-paranoid that my rats may have SDA, but I wanted to check here first. I touched them to make sure they weren't cold, which they weren't. This morning two of them were sneezing though. Webster has had a poor respiratory system throughout this whole ordeal with PT, but is taking baytril.
Should I be concerned about SDA or are these are likely to do with my ratties' other illnesses??
I hope she'll poor through that