Rats and tumours

Hi everyone, just wondering if any of you have had an outbreak of tumours in your rats? I was feeding Harland food but haven't went south for a while so switched to pig grower. Rats have been healthy and breeding well. Now recently in the past couple months the females will get a small lump and within a couple days lump quadruples in size. Under eye, on stomach area, neck etc. so it's not always the same place. It's unbelievable how quick the lump grows. The next generations are also getting them, even with outcrossing to the other male so I'm not inbreeding that I know of. In all the years of having and breeding rats I've never seen anything like it it happens from 5 mths old and up. Idk if this group was inbred prior to when I got them or if it's the food or? My males which I got from another source are going strong which leads me to think its unrelated to the food. It's taken a while to get some really neat dumbo rex colors and now idk if i should just start over or what? Any imput would be appreciated.

I would try to get another male to "refresh" the gene pool and see what happens.

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I would try to get another male to "refresh" the gene pool and see what happens.

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Refreshing the gene pool isn't the likely problem. If you notice most or all of your rats getting tumors as they get older, then it is in your lines. I would suggest getting an entire new set of rats to start breeding from, hopefully from a breeder who can tell you at least a little history about the rats, and whether their is history of tumors in them or not.

Inbreeding isn't a bad thing. Often, you see more health problems in lines constantly being out crossed.

I agree though. If you are seeing that many tumors, time to restart and get better lines.

I'm going to also agree it isn't inbreeding. If its that common, its in your lines, and continuous out crossing isn't going to fix it. If anything, if you did want to keep the lines going, you'd have to start doing some very serious inbreeding to actually weed that trait out and eliminate it (find the rats who have done offspring who don't get lumps, breed those offspring, keep their offspring that don't get lumps and breed those, etc).

You're sure they are tumors too.? Abscesses can grow pretty quickly and appear on any part of the body. They also don't require an external wound. I'd be surprised to have so many Rats at once with abscesses, but just a thought that occurred to me, especially with Rats so young developing these lumps.

Thank you all for the time to reply..Pretty sure they are abscesses because they are housed separate or in pairs unless breeding. Kinda wish that was the issue. What do you mean by abscess does not need an external wound? How would that develop? So I will be getting more from another breeder this weekend. Sounds like a long process to try breeding the tumors out of them. I'm really not looking forward to starting over.

Abscesses can form in a number of ways besides an obviously external wound. Small punctures can form an abscess, and sometimes even an internal infection can cause an abscess.

If they are tumors, I'd really be inclined to start over, especially with them forming so young.

Rats often get jaw and face abscesses from food getting stuck in their gums or cuts inside their mouths too, on the subject of not needing a wound to start.

But yep, try to find a good breeder with good lines. Even a reasonable pet breeder could be a good thing to look into. There's (fortunately) a rising number of people who breed pet rats, and also use the same rats as feeders. I think this is great, because it means that the quality of the rodents go up. :)