Okay so it's been in the mid 90's here for the last week. All of my breeder and feeder rats live down in my area way out side of my basement. It's all concrete, so it does stay pretty cool down there.

I've actually not had any rats die except for some babies that the moms rejected or didn't take care of. All 50+ rats of mine were perfectly healthy.. OR so I thought. Everyone gets new fresh water and refilled food daily. They get their tubs & tanks cleaned out every 5 days.


Two days ago I noticed that my pet rat CC went from looking bright eyed, hyper, healthy looking to looking like she was on deaths door. She had that "death hunched up back", wobbling around, real lethargic acting. She had her own cage up here in my room. So I found it odd but tried to help her out. By Sunday night she was so bad off that she was no longer moving around, laying in one corner and just looked horrible. I put her down right then and there to end her suffering and any pain she was in.


Today I just went down stairs to clean all of the rats tubs and tanks and about 30 of my rats adult to two weeks old looked and were acting exactly just like CC was a few days earlier. Most of them all look like they are old, sick, weak, etc. I don't understand why they all have gone from great looking, non sick rats to just about dead rats in a few day period? Looks like I'll be putting a lot of them, if not all of them down in the next few days.

All of my african rats seem to be doing just fine.

Has anyone else seen or had this happen to their rats? I'm not added any new rats in to my rat colony, so it's not an outside new rat sickness. I'm baffled!