I've been having the strangest thing going on in my rat colony. Every week or two, sometimes every few days I have a rat just fall over dead. Sometimes it's adult males, sometimes young weanlings. Seems like it's not in any particular tank. I started adding extra water bottles just in case some were not working, but I still have random deaths. I'm thinking it may be from the altitude since my elevation is close to 9000 feet above sea level? Or maybe a genetic defect? Seems like it happens in certain groups like it may be genetic... I wonder how many random deaths you can expect in a colony of rats. I usually have about 50 rats of various ages at any one time. The rats that die don't appear to be sick at all. None show signs of sickness or distress. Seems very odd. In the last six months or so I've probably lost about 15 rats out of probably 500. I also breed mice and African Soft Fur rats, never really had a death in those colonies except when adults eat the babies, then it's a mess.
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