In the last three weeks or so, which have been some of the hottest of the year, I lost a goodly number of pregnant females and had quite a few babies just disappear. I attributed to the heat and just rotten luck.

All the little guys who were not in racks, where doing just fine. Not a single death in there. Again, confirms my first suspicion that heat is the culprit. There is not a sneeze, a snotty nose, an unclean coat, on any rat in that room.

I just find bodies in he morning, limp usually.

So I have some VERY fat False Water Cobras; but I digress.....

I also, in my efforts to have the damnfinest damnfine rats out there, started putting bleach in the 5 gal. water reservoirs that all the racks have. I figured a capful in 5 gallons, that should kill any algae in the tubing and just about any bacteria that might be in the water. Overkill.

I haven't brought in an outside rat in at least 4 years. These guys are solid, health wise.

I was also putting a lid on the water buckets to keep the ever present dust out of the water. I use pine pellets and they are dusty. The lid was not tight, but covered the bucket.

Therein lies my problem. Chlorine gas can dissipate quickly given exposure to open air. I knew this. I forgot I knew this, but I did. What I did not know was that it would stay in the water in a much higher concentration than I thought. A concentration that was sufficient to kill a bunch of my breeders.

If the extreme heat didn't kill them. The room is air conditioned but does get into the upper 80s on occasion.

I found out about the non-evaporation of chlorine when I moved the lid of one of the water buckets, 5 days after filling it with water and adding a capful of bleach, and smelled a STRONG aroma of chlorine.

BING BING BING went the bell, flashing lights flared and fire works exploded, all to celebrate the stupidity of me.

Ahhh well.

So, a word of caution to those of you who use or wish to use bleach in the drinking water of your rodents, be careful not to overdose.

On a side note, either I am hallucinating on a much more regular basis than even I suspected, or a BUNCH of pinks and pups disappeared this week. I wonder if the heat and/or bleach made the adults eat the babies.