Summary: Watch as an animal care specialist discusses pet rat health care in this free online video about exotic pets.
Laura Fitzgerald has been an animal lover her entire life. Having her first pet rat at the age of 5 (after rescuing it from the snake food chain). Growing up on a 200 acre horse farm...read more
"Hi, I'm Laura Fitzgerald and on behalf of Expert Village, I would like to talk to you today about the care and maintenance of your pet rat. Now I am going to talk to you about your rat's health care. Generally rats do not get sick. They have a feel things that need to be done to take care of them to keep them of well-being. I am going to talk to you about that today. The first thing is that you need to make sure is that their eyes stay clear, that none of the dust or dander from the cage will poke in their eyes or crust up their eyes. If they do, you can just use a soft gauze to wipe around their eye to get rid of the gook that gets in their eye, so you can just get rid of it with a soft warm gauze pad. The second thing is their teeth since their teeth do not fall out like ours do, they will continuously grow. So chewing on the wood in their cage is going to make their teeth shorter and shorter and shorter. You can also brush their teeth with a gauze pad, by taking some gauze pad and putting it with some water. You can actually take the gauze pad, and if your rat actually likes you that much, you can take it and rub it on his front teeth and clean his teeth. You also have to be very careful, never stick anything into your rats ears, q-tips or anything. If the rats ears seems to be dirty on the outside, you can take your pinky and a little gauze pad and just wipe the outside of the rat's ear, but never stick anything down in your rat's ear. Rats have excellent hearing, and you never want to damage their ear drums. Rats also have skin irritations. They can get skin irritations due to the bedding, they can get skin irritations from perfumes or dyes or something like that. So you have to be very careful, even the perfume that you are wearing can irritate your rat or make their hair fall out or get bald spots on your rat. Brushing your rat with a kiddie brush or baby brush is always a wonderful thing to do to keep their blood circulating through their skin or keep their skin healthy and keep their coat healthy. You can also take a warm soapy gauze pad to wipe their tail, it will keep their tail clean and also make sure that there is not any damage to their tail, any sores or bruising done to their tails. Also it is very important not to have wire bottom in their cage since the wire bottom can cause irritation on the bottom of your rat's feet and the get sores on the bottom of their feet, and you don't want any irritation. Also the bedding can cause irritation if it has any dyes or perfumes or anything of that sort. Also keeping your cage clean and free of urine. Urine can burn the bottom of your rat's feet and cause irritation at the bottom and cause burns and sores. So you have to make sure that the bottom of the cage stays clean and dry, so not to cause irritation at the bottom of your rats belly or feet, very important. "
eHow Article: Pet Rat Health Care
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Comments
pmgrattery said
on 2/18/2009 Please do not listen to this one as much of her info is INCORRECT! Please visit www.pmgrattery.webs.com for accurate info on Rats. A Rex rat means curly or wavy fur and has NOTHING to do with the color. She also does not know the basic info of baby rats and she is sitting there breeding them! She says their eyes open at 6 weeks when they open at about 2 weeks. Also she says they start eating solid food at 6 weeks WHEN THEY START EATING SOLIDS AT 2 WEEKS ALTHO THEY WILL STILL ALSO NURSE UNTIL 5 weeks. She says the mom rat can get pregnant again at 6 weeks BUT SHE CAN GET PREGNANT RIGHT AWAY AFTER BIRTH! She also keeps the babies on WOOD shavings which is just unbearable to watch and can hurt the babies badly. Please, if you are a beginner do not listen to her as you can hurt ur rat and start off on the wrong foot. Please visit www.pmgrattery.webs.com for more accurate info or any other site online that is a breeder or a rat association...
babs8 said
on 1/18/2009 We recently got 2 pet rats, supposedly from the same litter. Occassionally, their eyes are gooey when they wake up & we do gently wipe them clean w/a warm, wet tissue. One rat often makes a noise, something like a sneeze, although this is the one that rarely has eye goo. Should we be concerned? We've had them almost 1 month---they both seem healthy otherwise, except for a barnyard like odor. We use "Healthy pet superior odor control bedding" made of "virgin wood pulp"...it feels & looks like soft, shredded cardboard/paper napkins --no pine or cedar. We feed them guineapig food, dry dog & cat food & various people snacks like crackers, pretzels, fruits, veggies, cheese & trailmix.
bhuk said
on 8/2/2008 Thank you madison lee for accurate health information, this video does show how much she loves her rats and basic care but I also caution that many rats can come down with myco and it does need to be treated. I think ratguide is an excellent resource to check after watching these videos to update the info given here. My feelings are the myco, proper bedding (aromatic oils) need to be addressed and that skin issues may also be related to diets and/or mites or other parasites. Maybe a redo of this video could update that information?
ratlover said
on 8/2/2008 Every one of these videos by Laura Fitzgerald are totally incorrect. What makes this woman an expert? Please people if you are watching this and reading the transcript check out ratguide.com or goosemoose.com
madisonlee said
on 8/2/2008 Rats actually have many health issues every rat owner should be aware of. One of the main issues are respiratory distress due to Mycoplasmosis. Every rat (besides laboratory rats) have Myco in their systems, and this causes rats to be very susceptible to respiratory issues. If you see your rat sneezing, breathing heavily, hear wheezing or small chirping sounds when breathing, your rat is ill and needs medical attention. Left unattended, the rat will die from respiratory distress.
Also, rats (especially females) are prone to tumors later in life, which can be removed by a vet if they are caught when they are small. If they are not removed, they can make regular everyday activities difficult and can shorten the rats life considerably (another reason why just anyone should be breeding rats - bred rats need to come from a reputable breeder who has pedigrees and health information for previous generations to ensure the babies will be healthy).
There are plenty others, so for anyone interested, please check out www.ratguide.com