jorats said:
I know that in the UK, it's very controversial, in fact, I've been called barbaric by some brits because I have my rats altered.
I certainly wouldn't call you barbaric
I advocate spaying, perhaps more than a lot of brits, but there are others out there who do too. We're just a bit behind the americas in that respect lol. I guess we will catch up eventually... :doh:
Whenever I give advice on tumour removal, I try to persuade the owner to get the rat spayed at the same time, and the main problem over here is there are not very many vets with experience of doing it, as it is less common over here.. a bit of a vicious circle but that will change with time!
Far too many females get hormone driven tumours in my experience, and spaying young is definitely a good preventative measure. Diet plays an important part too. Not all lines have a large prevalence of mammary tumours. I remember a breeder in the USA claiming that over the years they had managed to breed them out of one of their lines. Sadly, the first dumbos imported into the UK were not from this line...
I know a lot of UK breeders that are trying to aim to do the same, but it's nigh-on impossible unless you breed for decades.. given that most tumours develop after breeding age, so if you are a new breeder or working with new lines, you don't see them appear until after the breeding is done!
In the past when choosing rats, I have asked breeders if they minded if I had my girls spayed whilst still young, and got a variety of replies. A few were resistant to give me does if I went ahead and got them spayed. A few were open to the idea. A few had the preference that I waited to see if any developed tumours or not, before going ahead and getting tumour removal and spay at the same time (this certainly helps with long-term records of whether there are mammary tumours in the line or not).
Having had one of my does develop pyometra, and having to be spayed at over 2 years of age - I am all for spaying to prevent that alone! At approx 2 1/2 years of age, she developed a pituitary tumour.. I often wondered if she would never have got that PT if she had been spayed younger. I had 2 of her sisters too, 1 developed multiple mammary tumours (but lived to over 3 yrs old) and the other was PTS at 2 years old with a PT. Retrospect is a wonderful thing and I would most definitely have had all 3 girls spayed whilst young and healthy if I had known that was going to happen. They were from one of the first dumbo litters born in this country.
When I do get does again, I will definitely want to get them spayed, and if certain breeders (or rescuers) won't put me on their waiting lists because of that, then sobeit. The problem will be no longer having the same trusted vet that carried out spays of 2 of my later girls.
It is a dilemma when you have a vet that has never performed a spay before, do you put your beloved does at risk for the sake of the vet getting experience? I have done so in the past, (I had to for Honey's emergency spay, and the vet did an excellent job!) but I know a lot of people who wouldn't...
It is frustrating that people still think of surgery as such a huge risk.. it's not so much a myth - as something that used to be fact, but is on the whole no longer a fact!
Incredibly though, there are still some old fashioned vets in this country that are more used to working with large livestock than small pets, that still prefer to use injectible anaesthesia instead of gas, and so you have to find a good vet first. It is a sad fact that in every country, there are still a lot of incompetent vets around when it comes to knowing anything about rats. Things have definitely improved a lot in the last decade or so, but there are still some bad ones about in some areas of most countries. It is beyond belief how little some vets know, and that makes it necessary to give any new vets
the 3rd degree before allowing them to treat your rats for anything!
Here is an article I wrote on surgery on rats, where I stressed how it is generally much safer these days!
