sneezy rats

i bought a few small rats to feed (prekilled) to one of my new bps who hasn't taken f/t for me thus far. one of them started making a sneezy noise yesterday and now i think all of them are doing it. is this a cold or something i should treat before feeding them off or should i just feed them and not worry about it?

when i used to feed prekilled the rats i got did that too. I thought it was normal. I didnt have any adverse(sp?) affects.

It could mean they have a URI or maybe a cold or allergies or... I feed them off p/k to my snakes regardless.. however.. if they look sickly, I wont even buy them. Sometimes around here you have no choice but to buy a rodent that appears that it may be as mentioned above. Even at that, the few times I got rodents sniffling and sneezing, there were no adverse effects. I would not worry about it.

They were probably kept on pine or cedar bedding. This can cause respiratory problems in the rats. I do not think it's something that could be transferred to snakes of course.

From my experience, I would say it is just a myco flare-up from the stress of the trip. If you are going to feed them off anyway, it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean they are unhealthy, it just means that they are stressed out, so the sniffles start.

One of my males tends to be a bit "sneezy" when he's gets all happy and over-excited or is exploring something new. He's always been this way in the 5 months since we've had him and is healthy as a piglet.



~~Joanna~~

well, so far so good with the rattie sneezes here. 2 of the 4 were dinner (yummy!) and only 1 of the remaining 2 continues to be sneezy. other than that she seems fine, and since she will most likely be next in line for dinner this week i'm not too worried about it. :)