Random deaths

[Ballpythonbakery]

Just started breeding rats to feed my collection. It started off slow but has now in the 3rd month start to take off.

What I have noticed though is I seem to have random deaths. I initially thought that being they came from the local pet stores I have to assume that they all came from one mystery breeder. Where I live there isn't much for variety in any sort of fashion. I had a little rampage of respiratory infections that I mitigated with doxycycline for 10 days and haven't heard any active coughing.

Still though, I had a another male randomly drop dead today. Nothing looked unusual with any of them.

Just curious if this phenomenon is everywhere or my husbandry needs tuned up.

Rack rack of 9 gallon cement mixing bins 3 wide 4 rows high. Males constantly with females at ratio of 1:3. Feed is mazuri mixed with ol roy for extra calorie content and easier feed as mazuri needs special ordered. I also supplement with a little deer corn and sun flower seed I mix myself from bulk.

Now I know the ol roy will raise eyebrows but I'm not raising show rats and the contents are good in the macro nutrients. The idea is to cull them as soon as the production drops anyways. The corn is sometimes said to cause tumors but it's too soon to see that and let's face it, they love it and go nuts when I drop seeds and corn through the wire. It's like a treat.

They also get stale bread and cheerios on occasion.

Water is religiously changed.

Bedding is aspen/pine shreds. Changed every 5 days on average.

Seems mostly a male death thing. No signs of trauma from being murdered by females.

My mice? About useless. The rats are much better at this. Mice are horrible parents.

[kwright]

I recently have this same issue. what I did was dosages of doxycycline and I stopped feeding ol roy. I was feeding just ol roy with 27 % protein and 13% fat. ive recently switched to doggy bag dog food from tractor supply. it damn near replicates mazuri feed. and its only 13.99 a bag here in Kansas. so my deaths went from several a day down to maybe 1 every few days. which im still blaming on the ol roy as I think it had already done the damage to the liver or kidneys. I think it was just way to much for them. if you read my post, its only a few threads down from this one. I was having your same issues. my suggestion is to keep wherever your storing your rats up to temperature and just keeping everything clean. I did remove all the tubs and clean them with what I believe is called fcs10 or something like that. I got it from reptile basics. I scrubed the tubs with dawn dish soap and water. then let that dry. then I sprayed this fcs10 through a weed sprayer to what the recommended mix was. coat the tubs in this and let dry. then put them back into the racks once completely dry. also I run 1.4 ratio and clean every 4 to 5 days to keep the tubs cleaned out and fresh pine.

also another thing I did was mix oatmeal baby food with 2cc of penicillin per tub. I mixed it with apple juice. this is a 1 time dosage. easier than messing with the doxycycline. Hope this helps out.