Well this is really weird, I just did a full round of five days of antibiotic in their water. I did find a few that looked a bit weak and I fed those off, then did the antibiotic. Everyone seemed OK. Last night I changed over to water, gave fresh food and replaced all the bedding with pine shavings. Today I found another rat that just fell over dead... One thing I did notice is that I'm using Velcro inside of my tanks to hold up the water bottles. I did see one of the rats in that tank eating the Velcro, maybe the Velcro is killing them??????????
For food I use my own mixture of feed store grains and food: Whole corn / cracked corn / sunflower seeds / nutty bird food (all nuts) / 16% pig feed pellets / COB - corn oats and barley / and oats. I mix it up in a 5 gallon bucket and then feed them the mix, I replace it every day. No overcrowding at all, about 4 adult rats per 40 gallon, maybe less than a dozen young rats in a 40 gallon. I have them in glass aquariums with screen tops. None looked sick last night, I even sorted through them by hand to check them all out, one just fell over dead. There's probably 50-70 rats in my colony at any one time.
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