Rat Bedding Question?

What do most of you use as rat bedding? I have a pretty nice sized breeding operation with around 100 females. The first 6 months or so I used pine shavings from the local feed store. About 6 months ago I started getting cedar chips to mix with the pine to help the smell. I know cedar is bad for small animals but I was mixing it weak, 2/3 pine to 1/3 cedar. Everything has been going fine with it. Now all of a sudden this week I have had around 10 breeding females die. Could this be from the cedar? and if so why? Or is it just a coincedience?

Bad and worse. Pine can be used, but only if you're sure it's double or even triple milled and dry. Cedar must NEVER be used with any rodent or reptile, as it has oils that can kill them. No matter the amount.

I personally use aspen for the mice and rats, same as my snakes. Other choices include Woody Pet(wood pellets), and Carefresh(shake it out first).

I use pine and newspaper. I've been using it for almost 3 years and have not had any problems.

Sorry to hear you lost so many so quickly.

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Originally Posted by FatBoy

What do most of you use as rat bedding? I have a pretty nice sized breeding operation with around 100 females. The first 6 months or so I used pine shavings from the local feed store. About 6 months ago I started getting cedar chips to mix with the pine to help the smell. I know cedar is bad for small animals but I was mixing it weak, 2/3 pine to 1/3 cedar. Everything has been going fine with it. Now all of a sudden this week I have had around 10 breeding females die. Could this be from the cedar? and if so why? Or is it just a coincedience?

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Have you added any new rats? They might carry a disease the others have no imunity to. sorry.

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Originally Posted by West Coast Jungle

Have you added any new rats? They might carry a disease the others have no imunity to. sorry.

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No. I started this colony with a dozen or so rats about a year ago. Nothing new, as bad as I hate to say it, I am leaning towards the cedar. Just hope I don't continue to lose them at this rate. Cleaned last night and went to all pine, NO CEDAR!

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Originally Posted by Argentra

Bad and worse. Pine can be used, but only if you're sure it's double or even triple milled and dry. Cedar must NEVER be used with any rodent or reptile, as it has oils that can kill them. No matter the amount.

I personally use aspen for the mice and rats, same as my snakes. Other choices include Woody Pet(wood pellets), and Carefresh(shake it out first).

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The pine comes in a plain brown paper bag, how will I know if it's milled and dried? It is just sold as pine shavings. And can the rats I have had on some cedar affect my snakes I have been feeding them to? I feed mostly weaned rats so they have not been on the cedar too long. Like I said above NO ONE is on cedar as of now.

I use pine shavings. I like the stuff that is finely shaved, but at the moment I am using the stuff that is in bigger chunks. That is what they ordered at the feed store, so that is what I am using. It seems to work well. I do have some females die every now and then, but I chocked it up to pregnancy problems. I have never had issues with males dying, so I figure they are not dying because of the pine.

Good luck, and keep us posted.

Honestly I probably wouldn't be going out on a limb to say it was the Cedar. It's highly toxic, yes pine is too, but Cedar is much stronger!

If you want to cut back on the smell you could mix your pine with the recycled paper bedding. It's safe and it really helps with the smell. I notice that I have to change my breeder rat cages (pine) twice as often as my pet rat cage (recycled paper).

Would shreaded paper work the same? Where do you get the recycled paper bedding?

I use Harlan Diamond soft bedding for both my snakes and rats and I wont use anything else going forward. The reason I like this bedding is that it is very absorbant and keeps the smell down. My colony isnt as large as yours but the only down side is it's 17.99 for a 20lb bag and right now I go through about 1.75 bags per month housing 28 rats - 2 in each bin. Coldbloods.com is where I pick mine up from and Courtland is a great guy to deal with.

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Originally Posted by FatBoy

Would shreaded paper work the same? Where do you get the recycled paper bedding?

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Sorry I haven't checked back for awhile. I get the recycled paper bedding from walmart. It comes in blue pink white green and gray. I have always used gray because you have to pay a few dollars more for color :confused:

I don't think shredded paper would work as nicely because this recycled paper bedding his super expandable. You know how you start pulling the pine out of the bag and there's tons more of it then you thought? Well this recycled paper bedding is the same way. Only it doesn't expand as much until it gets wet. If you only use the RPB you're only supposed to cover the bottom with about an inch of it because it will expand so much.

Hope this helps. It's about $5 for enough bedding to fill a 4x2 foot area twice. Not sure, maybe a 55 gal tank?

Frankie,

Try using the pine you are getting with a thin layer of pelleted pine under it. Pelleted pine is sold under a few different brand names but I use Woody Pet. It really helps to keep the smell down!

Jamie

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Originally Posted by FatBoy

What do most of you use as rat bedding? I have a pretty nice sized breeding operation with around 100 females. The first 6 months or so I used pine shavings from the local feed store. About 6 months ago I started getting cedar chips to mix with the pine to help the smell. I know cedar is bad for small animals but I was mixing it weak, 2/3 pine to 1/3 cedar. Everything has been going fine with it. Now all of a sudden this week I have had around 10 breeding females die. Could this be from the cedar? and if so why? Or is it just a coincedience?

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You should use carefresh bedding because it asorbs odor well. and it wont hurt the rodents

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Originally Posted by Ballpython2

You should use carefresh bedding because it asorbs odor well. and it wont hurt the rodents

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Carefresh is a poor rodent bedding. It's very dusty which is bad for them, and also does not absorb odor (ammonia) or liquid very well.

Aspen is a good choice, although lab grade products like diamond soft are some of the best out there.

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Originally Posted by littleindiangirl

Carefresh is a poor rodent bedding. It's very dusty which is bad for them, and also does not absorb odor (ammonia) or liquid very well.

Aspen is a good choice, although lab grade products like diamond soft are some of the best out there.

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its bad? i used it for my other rats when i had some yrs ago and it seemed to work just fine for me and it wasnt dusty once they were walkin all over it and such. never had any health issues.

I've been using the pelleted pine for my ASFs. They don't smell as bad the the regular rats, but it still keeps the smell down. Its called Boreal Pellets, and its $8 for 30 lbs.

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Originally Posted by Ballpython2

its bad? i used it for my other rats when i had some yrs ago and it seemed to work just fine for me and it wasnt dusty once they were walkin all over it and such. never had any health issues.

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It is very dusty and will irritate their lungs and sinuses, and also goop up their eyes and noses. It's also supposed to be a great breeding ground for mold, and doesnt absorb very well.

I'm all pine. I tried aspen for a while but found it SUCKED at absorbing, and it made the smell unbearable after about 3 days. If pine is good enough for Ralphie, it's good enough for me. I've never had any problems.

Frankie
I use half aspen and half Cell-Sorb plus and it work great for me. The cell-sorb is basically newspaper pellets.

Well I tell you this has been a very stressful time for me. I hate walking to the Rat barn and wondering how many I will find dead this time. We have changed bedding and everything else. This is unreal. Hope we can find the answer and solve it soon. FatBoy and I are working at it hard.

Check the back feet and tails of the dead rats if you still have any around (any fresh deaths, not suggesting that you're hoarding a bunch of rats that died of illness), check for color, are they bluish? Also check the tails, are they rounded, or are they more box-like? Are they rats of all ages, or certain age groups? It could be a bout of myco, which could make them drop like flies. If they've got bluish feet, tails and sometimes lips, and sometimes they have weird boxy tails (sometimes old, old adults do as well, which is why I asked age group), then it sounds like it may be the case. Cure? Fish medication. Check into what I said, let me know, and if it sounds like it, I'll send you some extra, more specific information, as well as where to get the medication.

Myco isn't the type of infection to just flare up in a large colony like this unless there is a primary infection being spread around. Myco is generally a secondary infection that takes hold once something comprimises the immune system since it's virtually in every rat.

You could potentially save a lot of lives if you were to take one of the sick or dead animals into the vet to be treated or necropsied to find out the cause of death and find out what sort of infection is spreading.

It could be a disease, or it could be environmental, or your females are just old and died from exhaustion.

More details are needed before we start prescribing home remedies.

Thanks for all your suggestions and concerns. To be honest we haven't been tracking our females breeding, age group and things of that nature. We just make sure they are cleaned each week and change out the water twice a week. I told FatBoy that after breeding season (boas/balls) we are going to track their breeding pattern. That way we can cycle our females without stressinig them out. We just purchased about fifteen rats to help restoke the breeding population. Again thanks for the concerns. No dead rats have been found for three days.