Provent-a-mite on rodents?

[Shelby]

I somehow have lice on my rats again.. I think they came with some rats my cousin gave me.

Anyway I've been using a mite and louse treatment made for birds.. but all the warnings on the label make me really nervous! The real problem with it is that it doesn't kill the eggs.. I know provent-a-mite does! Is there any reason why I can't treat the rat cages with it?

[SatanicIntention]

Go to the feed store, pick up a tube of 1.87% ivermectin ONLY horse deworming paste. It is around $5. Give an UNCOOKED grain of rice sized dose per rat once per day for 2 weeks. It works well on external parasites as well as internal parasites if you have never had a fecal on them.

Some of mine liked it when we had tropical rat mites here, and some put up a big ol' hissy. I just put the dose on my finger, restrain rat, and shove my finger against the side of their mouth so they have to clean it off. Works well and will get rid of the lice easily.

Please don't use the PAM. Maybe on the carpet around the cages so as to prevent the spread of the lice, but not in their cages. They would ingest it somehow. You can always use Kitten Revolution(selemectin) and it lasts a month, but I prefer to use the ivomec as the selemectin sometimes has mixed results.

Good luck, and maybe consider giving the tranquil ones a bath in some Dawn/Palmolive.

[Shelby]

Ok. I have some puppy/kitten shampoo that kills the lice. I can bathe them in that. It worked before. I'm really paranoid about putting stuff on them because if there's any trace of the stuff on them the snakes are going to eat it. Do you recommend I bathe the rats before they are put into the freezer to get rid of any possible residue from the treatments?

[SatanicIntention]

What do you mean by residue? I wouldn't bathe them in the puppy/kitten shampoo, I have never trusted any brand that does that except for one in particular sold at a veterinarian.

Just use the ivermectin paste orally once per day for 2 weeks and the lice will be gone, no bathing needed. It won't hurt the snakes as the ivermectin will more than likely be out of their system a week later.

[Shelby]

Oh ok. I just have a terrible time with lice.. never think I'm rid of them! One problem is that I have a ton of young and baby rats. I wouldn't think I could give them the ivermectin too.. can I? If I can't, won't the lice just hang out on them?

[SatanicIntention]

The babies, don't worry about it, but the older ones just use half the dose of the adults. If the babies are still nursing, I believe ivermectin crosses the milk barrier, so they will get some protection from the lice. You could try bathing them in the kitten shampoo, but I've known alot of products like that to cause seizures and death, so just be careful with it.

You an also spray the Provent-A-Mite on the carpet in the rat room, but don't let it get on their cages or anything, they might lick it off.

[Shelby]

I used the shampoo before several times.. even on rat pups with no problems.

[Shelby]

Ok I got a tube.. they all seemed to say anthelmintic and boticide.. is this ok?

[TekWarren]

~rise up oh dead topic!~

I was wondering the same thing as the OP about POM and rodents. I've stopped my in-house rodent breeding for a time to re-think/organize how I want to do it. Anyway I've started buying rodents from a women who runs a pet store. At first things went pretty good and the animals looked healthy but the last couple times not so good. I usually keep the rodents for a week or so especially this time because they where just not clean. I keep them in tubs and give them as much food/water as they want. This last batch of mice is looking even better visually over night.

Backup to yesterday...being that I'm not a bit nervous with the quality of the live rodents (they are fed pre-killed) I wondered if I could treat their fresh bedding with POM so I did some searching. I found this on Ralph Davis's website in the first page of search hits:

Lately all I use is POM for mites..........it works every time...........I had a bad experience with lice in my rodent collection a while back..........nothing I did would get rid of the rat lice............and the vets and professionals I spoke to said that the lice were really not a problem..........they were species specific.............and that they would just live on the rats...........they would not hurt me or my snakes.

Well I hated the fact that their were lice around............even though they are not easy to see.............you just know that they are there and that bugged me.............anyway...........BK did not work at all.................so I called Bob Pound............he said to use the POM in the bedding...........or to spray the POM on cotton balls and let the rodents bed in it..........

I chose to just spray it in the bedding...............We did this once a week for a month.............not only did the POM kill the lice................but it killed every bug that even came close to the rat room..........there were dead flies, moths, worms, spiders.............you name it ..............everything was dead!!

In that last line "everything" does NOT include the rodents he was treating.

Reading this was enough to convince me...I have POM in my herp supplies so I treated the bedding. I gave it a lite spray in each tub (rats/mice) I then agitated the bedding to "mix it up" and each tub got some drying time outside.

Already yesterday evening I had a mouse in bad shape I would guess nerve/neurological damage as he was leaning heavily to the side...practically laying over. When attempting movement it was more or less in a circle and could not get to food or water...I took his misery away. I noticed he had some bite/chew marks under the tail close to the base of the spine also.

Now today I have another mouse who is showing similiar signs of leaning over and and while CAN still get to food and water walks in the same cicular pattern but not as bad as the one I found yesterday. This mouse was seperated with easy to reach food and water for observation.

Now I'm worried if its the POM doing this?? Or severe inbreeding which takes pretty deep in-breeding I had thought? OR something related to the conditions at the shop I purchased them from. At this point the other remaining mice are fine. The rat tub was treated in the same manor as I said but I have not seen any of them having issues.

I'm thinking I will dump the bedding to be safe? I've raised mice for years but this one of the few times I have done any sort of "treatment" and the first time with POM. Would it affect them this quickly? One nearly dead in just a few hours and another looking that way the next day? I did not pick the mice nor inspect them aside from putting them into my own containers when I picked them up but that would not have been long enough to see these signs.

Any suggestions, comments, or experiences?

[SatanicIntention]

I would say it's the POM. I've never had any just die from bad genetics or anything like that. They're pretty hardy. Those mice could have grabbed a piece of bedding as they always do, and chewed on it, getting the poison into their system, and killing them. I would not use that bedding if you've sprayed it all.

Thoroughly clean out the tubs to get rid of any residue, even in the rat cages, and replace them with clean bedding. If you need to, go to a feed store or another similar store and pick up Zodiac Kitten/Puppy Powder. It gets rid of fleas, mites, etc and is very gentle. You can even use it underneath your snakes' bedding as a preventative measure.

Also, you can treat every rodent that comes in your door with a small dose of Ivermectin paste(1.87% horse paste, usually costs around $5). Dose is an uncooked grain of rice once a day for 2 weeks(or until fed off). They should do fine with it and it won't affect the snakes any.