I made a post regarding orphaned ratlings last week; let me first say they are doing great and eating solid foods awesomely.
Now, I think I have figured out why their mom died of convulsions last week. Here's the gross, disgusting details.
Our landlord uses rat poison out in the barn. This never seemed to be a problem, cuz our rats are in the house. But this gets nasty. A few days ago we smelled a HORRID stench in our kitchen coming home at night. There was a dead, wild rat under my cabinet in there!! He must have come in, climbed up on top of the mama's cage to investigate. Now, I had a metal grill type thing as a lid on her cage, and my theory is that he had some of the food in his mouth (rats often do this) and it maybe dropped into her tank and she ate it? I know it says it takes 10 days to kill a rat, and for about that long, she had been looking bad;bleeding a little out of her mouth and avoiding the babies, preferring to curl up on the other end of the cage.
I am just really thankful that the babies are doing OK and are not dead. They were nursing off of ehr though, so i am still watching them to see if they show any bad signs.
Of course, this could be completely unrelated to the poison. Mama was kept on cedar chips all her life at a girl's house, and then given to ym friend's pet store where I got her. Maybe it was a fatal RI?