Cull and start again?

Hello,

I was attempting to a get a rat colony going. I had 12 females and 4 males. I purchased all but one female from a local pet store and the males I got from a friend/breeder. This one female that my friend suggested I get from her local petstore apparently had a RI. My friend said she thought is was just because she was housed on dusty bedding that she was a little wheezy, so her being the one more experienced with rats I listened and bought the rat. She was actually the first one I bought. I picked up the rest within two weeks. Now one month later they all are sneezing a lot. The female that was sick dropped dead last night. Nothing else appeared wrong, just the RI.

So, I'm now wondering should I cull everyone and start over? So upset since I was able to start breeding one group and the others would be soon to follow. How contagious is this? Should I disinfect everything prior to bringing in a new colony (next time I will just go and take the drive to a feeder breeder and get them all at the same time). Or should I try to medicate everyone? I have them on tetracycline in their water (been about 5 days), I'm attached to a few of these guys but I don't want to risk infecting new stock so if I cull I assume I need to cull them all.

Thanks for any advice/help you can offer.
Nicole

Unless your willing to take them to a vet and get this RI tested to see if it is bacterial or viral treating with a low level antibiotic is not going to help. And I wouldn't feed your animals any feeder that has been on antibiotics. I say it is your choice, what ever you are feel is the best choice for you, cull them all or take them to the vet.

Here is what I would do. If these where "pets" I would get them vet care, but since they are your breeding colony for feeders I would cull them and start over. When you buy new rats make sure they seem totally healthy before you bring them home.

See? This is where I get confused. On this forum is where I read to treat with tetracycline in the water to treat an RI. I imagine that it must have been a mild case then? I was also under the impression that RI's in rats weren't curable, just treatable? So I'm thinking I will cull and start over (I hate too, but I don't want to treat for months on end just to have them keep passing it to each other or pass it to offspring).
So if someone thinks I should give them a chance and treat let me know, otherwise I will cull them this week. :(
If these were pets they would have been to the vet long ago, but as feeder breeders I'm not really sure what the norm is. Thanks for your suggestions.

I believe most RIs in rats are just flare-ups of myco. They already have the myco, which I guess is usually sort of dormant. But something such as the stress of moving to a new home, dusty bedding, or any number of other things makes it flare up. If a rat/mouse has a strong immune system, and the living conditions, diet, etc are good, the flare-ups should be relatively mild and they should recover. On the other hand, it can be fatal, as you have seen.

I had a similar issue when I was starting up my mouse colony. I went with the theory that if their immune system was strong enough for them to recover from the myco flare-up, then there was nothing wrong with having them in my colony. I gave them echinacea to boost their immune system. After I culled the ones that didn't do so well, I ended up with about half of the mice I had originally purchased.

Here is a link to the thread I made at the time. You might find some of the info and comments in there to be useful:
http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...ad.php?t=73792

Thanks Casey, that gave me a lot more info to work with. It does look like Myco (all the signs are there). I went and listened to everyone, the ones that are the worst are two of the males I got from my friend. They are hairless so I wonder if they are weaker and more prone to illness/stress? The other two furred males are still young 5-6 weeks and are not sneezing at all. I do notice it's quiet until I start feeding treats and everyone gets excited. So I will try echinacea and I have a full bottle of baytril on hand from my vet so I will try to get it into all of them (that will be FUN). I'll give them another week or two and see if there is any improvement. If anyone gets worse I will have to "let them go". ;)
Also nice to know that I wasn't the only one with the same issues.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kc261

I believe most RIs in rats are just flare-ups of myco. They already have the myco, which I guess is usually sort of dormant. But something such as the stress of moving to a new home, dusty bedding, or any number of other things makes it flare up. If a rat/mouse has a strong immune system, and the living conditions, diet, etc are good, the flare-ups should be relatively mild and they should recover. On the other hand, it can be fatal, as you have seen.

I had a similar issue when I was starting up my mouse colony. I went with the theory that if their immune system was strong enough for them to recover from the myco flare-up, then there was nothing wrong with having them in my colony. I gave them echinacea to boost their immune system. After I culled the ones that didn't do so well, I ended up with about half of the mice I had originally purchased.

Here is a link to the thread I made at the time. You might find some of the info and comments in there to be useful:
http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...ad.php?t=73792

---

I had the same experience with my rats I treated their water with echinacea and fed them some fresh vegetables with their food a couple times a week for a month or so and the majority of my breeders survived I would only cull the ones that looked really skinny. I have not seen any signs of RI since and that has been over a year ago.

3 steps

Kill them

Bin them

Buy more

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PYTH0N BOY

3 steps

Kill them

Bin them

Buy more

---

LOL! I know, I KNOW! That's probably what I should do, but I do want to give them a chance. Especially the two males that don't have any symptoms. Also, my two pet old timers are fine. So I'm hoping to keep those that can overcome this and then cull/add from there. I'm a softie of sorts so if I can help them, I will. (Odd to be a softie and yet feed these same critters to my snakes...never claimed to be sane!)

I purchased a rather large quanity of rats to start breeding as well. They came from a reptile breeder who was downsizing. They were all very thin and many were sneezing and had runny noses. I have a friend who runs a rat rescue. Though she is not happy that I breed them for food she gave me some advice to hep the sick rats. Out of about 30 rats, only 3 ended up dying.

I was told to supply them with a good quality rodent lab block, alfalfa and suppliment with infant similac formula mixed with oatmeal to a thick consistency. I was also informed that an RI in rats is not usually passed from rat to rat if the conditions are clean and correct. They can be kept with healthy rats as they help take care of eachother if one is sick thereby reducing the amount of stress.

I followed these steps and lost only 3. All the others were fattened up before being split into M/F colonies. They are all doing fine now.

This is a topic I've debated for quite some time.

I had a nice healthy collection of rats going, then decided to bring home a "cute" female rat from the pet store per the suggestion of a friend. Big mistake.

That rat got my entire collection sick, I lost about half of my dozen breeder female rats. The others recovered and don't sneeze or have symptoms since that time.

I don't know if it's just since then, or if it's always been this way, but I've never felt my production is where it should be. I will have mature rat moms drop between 5-12 babies, very rarely giving litters as low as 3 and as high as 15. I have heard pro breeders averaging 12+ and I'm not near that mark.

I spoke with Marc Bailey at length about this. For those of you that don't know Marc, he is a big time rodent breeder. He knows more about rodents than I can imagine. He keeps his rat collection extremely isolated, only he and employees have access to it. Clean shoes, clean clothes, etc... He has his bedding and food delivered DIRECT from the factory. The reason for this is that some rat viruses, once they get in your collection, will cripple your production forever until you start over. I don't remember the names of the particular viruses offhand.

Marc said to start over you have to bleach your equipment and let it sit for some time before introducing new rats.

My thought is: I probably have one or more of those type of viruses in my collection due to pet store rat. So, should I start over? Well, I don't ever intend to keep things as sterile as Marc as I don't want to put in that much work. So is it worth the time/effort to start over given that there is a chance that a friend or fellow breeder could re-introduce said virus on a visit sometime? I just don't know.

JonV