So last night I found that one of my rats (a male that hasn't been too healthy ) had rat mites all over him. Since its a closed colony the only place it could have come from is the bedding I bought last. I sprayed him with Reptile Relief which has been tested and is safe for rodents. Today I have to change all the bedding as I saw a few here and there on a couple other rats. I wrote to Bob Pound at Pro Products (the makers of Provent A Mite) to ask whether PAM could be used for rat mites. His response indicates that even though PAM is not approved for use with rodents and recommending it would be against the law, that it has been tested and does work without complications for the rodent or the animal that ends up consuming it. Here is his response:


We have done clinical studies with our product on rodents. We found that it didn’t cause any acute or chronic health problems for the rodents or anything that ate them (reptiles, raptors and mammals were used) when applied per the same method as it labeled for use with reptiles. Since rodent bedding is changed frequently, in order to make the application more cost effective, we treated cotton balls per the label method and rate, then inserted about 20 cotton balls per habitat. The rodents would use the cotton to make a nest. Every time they went in and out of the nest, they would be treated. This resulted in a 100% effective control of all ectoparasites on the rodents. When the cages were cleaned, the nest was removed, put aside and replaced in the clean cage. We found the nest to remain effective for at least 30 days.



We did try to use several other formulas using a more common isomer of permethrin, as they are much cheaper than the one we use. We found a high rate of chronic health problems in both reptiles and raptors that were fed the contaminated rodents. Breaking the formula down into its components, we found that these other molecules of the active as well as two other ingredients found in almost every other formula were the cause. Because our formula is considerably more expensive to manufacture than other formulas & methods presently EPA approved for treating rodents, along with the very high cost to submit our product to be approved for this use, we decided it was economically unfeasible to do so. For this reason, we can’t recommend our product for this use as it is not labeled as such.