Apple, one of the girls that I started my rattery with has passed away today.
When I started my rounds to feed everyone today and check on rats and babies, I noticed that Apple was dying. Apple was a beautiful black bareback with a head spot top ear rat. We retired her after only one litter because of health issues that arose after the birth of her litter. Those health issues have finally claimed her life a year later.
Apple was only 8 weeks old when I got her in Feb of 2009. She has always been housed with Taffy, who I am assuming said her goodbyes before I found Apple. Apple, we believe, wanted to spend her last few hours with humans, as she was at the top of the cage, where the rest of her colony was at the bottom.
I took Apple out and left my husband spend some time with her while I finished filling food bowls. Then I took over caring for her and keeping her calm. I know it is rat nature to panic in those last few moments, so I held her, kept her calm and spoke with her. Tell her that I loved her and that I will miss her, but it is her time to go. I told her that it was ok for her to let go and I told her about how beautiful the Rainbow Bridge was.
I told her that Lucky ad his 3 sibs that were lost in litter were waiting for her. I told her that her son Gizmo, who died from conplications with megacolon was waiting for her and I told her that Coco, who she was close to and died during a neuter surgery was waiting for her too. I told her about all of her friends that were waiting for her as well, like Smudge, our 2 legged ratty, and Squeaky, my husband's baby, are waiting for her as well. Not to mention all of the rescues that we have lost over the past year. Apple has been fighting for the past year with resp issues and we knew her time was coming. I saw the signs over a month ago that she was losing her battle with it, but we kept her as comfortable as we could.
Apple died at 4:02pm on Saturday, May 8th. She is survived by her cage mate and long time friend Taffy. Her other cage mates, Donna, Fawna, Squeaka, Harmony, Charisma, Dash, Jess, Simi, Summer, Autumn and Misty will miss her greatly, I am sure. She was the defender of the cage and when I introduced Summer and Autumn a few days ago and Apple did not bother to even check them out, I knew her time was limited.
Apple has a wonderful, sweet personality and she will be greatly missed. We will be burying her on Monday in a shoebox wrapped in fleece, to make her journey over the Rainbow Bridge comfortable. She will be missed
Tami
Social Rats Adoption and Rescue
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
RIP Trip
I want to start out by saying that the last 14 hours have been rough for me this time around. Unfortunately we had to put a young rat to sleep, an emergency euthaniziation last night. Let me explain:
All of our cages in the Chicago facility, which is my home, have been donated. We take in quite a variety of cages from donations and we got a set of cages that had small bar spacing, built in food dishes, and built in wheels, big ones, so thought it would be great for holding some of our younger rats. I was planning to move a group of girls out of one of them last night to get them into a larger cage and to help with getting them better socialized. However, I am on meds for my back that, after a while, cause me to get very tired and I just ran out of energy last night. That I will regret for a long time to come.
As my husband and I were getting ready for bed, just snugglng watching TV, we heard a squeak, we waited to see if it was something serious as quite often if we just to the first squeak, we get out to the rat room, which is just feet from our bedroom door, and turn on a light and get all these little ratty faces looking as us like "What?", so we wanted to be sure that it was something worth getting up for. After about 10 seconds, we realized that maybe it was worth checking into.
As soon as my husband got out to the rat room, he called to me to come out, that he needed help. I came out immediately, turned on the light and saw what he needed help with. We say, what appeared to be, a young female rat with her leg stuck at the top of the wheel. I thought that she just had her foot stuck, so we worked carefully to quickly assess the situation with her. I turned the wheel backwards about 3 turns and she took off. We decided, at that moment, no matter how much pain my back was in, and no matter how tired we both were, to move them to the other cage. So here we are, at midnight, moving rats from one cage to another.
I was not sure which rat had been stuck, so as we are pulling out all of our black bareback girls, I am checking their legs to make sure they are all ok. One, two, three rats, all ok. So maybe the girl (who I named Trip after all of this), was actually ok. THe last rat we pulled out of the cage told me that she was not ok and I am glad we decided at that moment to pull move the rats out.
As soon as I picked her up, I knew that she was hurt as she was not only not using her back leg, that it was just hanging limp, like she could not move it. I turned her over, which she did not fight, and discovered soemthing that brought tears to my eyes. Her back leg had been broken severly by being trapped in the wheel and the bone was actually sticking out of the skin.
What we think happened is that, as happens quite often, 2 rats were trying to share the wheel in the cage. One rat was running faster than the other and Trip got a "go around" or just hung on as she got flipped over the wheel. NOrmally it is a funny thing to watch as one rat hangs on as another gives her a ride. However, in this case, there was nothing funny about her ride. Most likely, halfway through her ride either she tried to get out of the wheel or her leg slipped off and got caught in the bar that holds the wheel onto the cage. Because rats will run at full speed in a wheel, the wheel made a couple of turns before he leg being caught caused it to get stuck. This, most likely, is when she started to squeak. Had it been a scream, we would have been right up, but it was just a squeak, sounding like protest rather than pain.
Because her leg was broken, we took just a moment to determine our options. Even if we took her to an emergency vet, and even if they did surgery to amputate her leg (there was no saving the leg) she would still be in pain for no less than a month, assuming that once it healed that she would be pain free. Most likely the vet would recommend euthanization as well, because of how bad it was, so we made the choice to put her to sleep here. We have a set up here for putting rats to sleep, to help save on money AND so we know the rats are being humanely euthanized, not a heart stick.
So, quickly, we said our good byes to her and put her to sleep late last night. Normally I do it slow, to give them time to adjust and fall asleep, but I moved it up a bit last night, without causing her undue pain, but wanting to end her pain quickly. Once she was gone, I checked out her leg more thoroughly. I know that, after looking at it, that we made the right choice. It was broken worse that we first believed, so I know that we did the best possible thing for her last night that we could.
This is the first injury of this nature we have had here and I am feeling so guilty at the moment, have been since last night. I did not even imagine that something like this could happen from that cage and I know now not to put young rats in those cages. We are going to be moving any rats under 6 months old out of those cages and will start to warn rat owners about this cage an the damage that it could cause their rats. Within the month I will have a warning up on my site as well, to warn everyone about the cag and so my readers here can see what the cage looks like so if they have the cage, they can be warned about the issues that could happen with them.
Have a Blessed Day
Tami
Social Rats Adoption and Rescu
All of our cages in the Chicago facility, which is my home, have been donated. We take in quite a variety of cages from donations and we got a set of cages that had small bar spacing, built in food dishes, and built in wheels, big ones, so thought it would be great for holding some of our younger rats. I was planning to move a group of girls out of one of them last night to get them into a larger cage and to help with getting them better socialized. However, I am on meds for my back that, after a while, cause me to get very tired and I just ran out of energy last night. That I will regret for a long time to come.
As my husband and I were getting ready for bed, just snugglng watching TV, we heard a squeak, we waited to see if it was something serious as quite often if we just to the first squeak, we get out to the rat room, which is just feet from our bedroom door, and turn on a light and get all these little ratty faces looking as us like "What?", so we wanted to be sure that it was something worth getting up for. After about 10 seconds, we realized that maybe it was worth checking into.
As soon as my husband got out to the rat room, he called to me to come out, that he needed help. I came out immediately, turned on the light and saw what he needed help with. We say, what appeared to be, a young female rat with her leg stuck at the top of the wheel. I thought that she just had her foot stuck, so we worked carefully to quickly assess the situation with her. I turned the wheel backwards about 3 turns and she took off. We decided, at that moment, no matter how much pain my back was in, and no matter how tired we both were, to move them to the other cage. So here we are, at midnight, moving rats from one cage to another.
I was not sure which rat had been stuck, so as we are pulling out all of our black bareback girls, I am checking their legs to make sure they are all ok. One, two, three rats, all ok. So maybe the girl (who I named Trip after all of this), was actually ok. THe last rat we pulled out of the cage told me that she was not ok and I am glad we decided at that moment to pull move the rats out.
As soon as I picked her up, I knew that she was hurt as she was not only not using her back leg, that it was just hanging limp, like she could not move it. I turned her over, which she did not fight, and discovered soemthing that brought tears to my eyes. Her back leg had been broken severly by being trapped in the wheel and the bone was actually sticking out of the skin.
What we think happened is that, as happens quite often, 2 rats were trying to share the wheel in the cage. One rat was running faster than the other and Trip got a "go around" or just hung on as she got flipped over the wheel. NOrmally it is a funny thing to watch as one rat hangs on as another gives her a ride. However, in this case, there was nothing funny about her ride. Most likely, halfway through her ride either she tried to get out of the wheel or her leg slipped off and got caught in the bar that holds the wheel onto the cage. Because rats will run at full speed in a wheel, the wheel made a couple of turns before he leg being caught caused it to get stuck. This, most likely, is when she started to squeak. Had it been a scream, we would have been right up, but it was just a squeak, sounding like protest rather than pain.
Because her leg was broken, we took just a moment to determine our options. Even if we took her to an emergency vet, and even if they did surgery to amputate her leg (there was no saving the leg) she would still be in pain for no less than a month, assuming that once it healed that she would be pain free. Most likely the vet would recommend euthanization as well, because of how bad it was, so we made the choice to put her to sleep here. We have a set up here for putting rats to sleep, to help save on money AND so we know the rats are being humanely euthanized, not a heart stick.
So, quickly, we said our good byes to her and put her to sleep late last night. Normally I do it slow, to give them time to adjust and fall asleep, but I moved it up a bit last night, without causing her undue pain, but wanting to end her pain quickly. Once she was gone, I checked out her leg more thoroughly. I know that, after looking at it, that we made the right choice. It was broken worse that we first believed, so I know that we did the best possible thing for her last night that we could.
This is the first injury of this nature we have had here and I am feeling so guilty at the moment, have been since last night. I did not even imagine that something like this could happen from that cage and I know now not to put young rats in those cages. We are going to be moving any rats under 6 months old out of those cages and will start to warn rat owners about this cage an the damage that it could cause their rats. Within the month I will have a warning up on my site as well, to warn everyone about the cag and so my readers here can see what the cage looks like so if they have the cage, they can be warned about the issues that could happen with them.
Have a Blessed Day
Tami
Social Rats Adoption and Rescu
Monday, March 22, 2010
Extra Soy free treats and rattery/rescue update
Thinking back, all those years ago, I know that mom and I never used any of these treats that are available now and we did so without issue. So, both Rebecca and I (of Rebecca's Sweet and Loving Rats who is the other breeder that I am working with) have made a few choices with our study, since we are trying to keep as soy free as possible. We are going all natural with the chews, so we are giving them pig ears to eat AND I even found the most awesome treat at Wal-Mart along the same lines, which is a pig skin stuffed with sweet potato (soy free). I got some wet cat food for my pregnant and nursing girls (a few of my own, a bunch of girls that came in through my rattery) to supplement their diets with. I also picked up some Boost protein drink, to use in place of Ensure for any rats I get that are sick that need it. I would rather expose them to small amounts of soy rather than risk their lives just to keep them soy free.
Everyone got a chicken and baby food supplement tonight, so that helps also with keeping them on a healthy diet as well. I have some yogurt and some broccoli for later on in the week and next week. Having 30 cages of rats is not easy to try to give supplements to, but I do what I can. Thankfully 7 of them are going into foster later this week with another almost 30 that have been reserved, so that will bring the numbers down considerably. Still have a bunch of litters to work with, but once the numbers thin a bit, it will seriously help with making time for that.
We have 1 girl and 4 boys left from the litter coing available on March 25th and have another litter that will be available on April 7th. Not counting the 4 older boys that I still need to find homes for. A pair of himi boys and 2 black hooded boys. I will be moving some dumbos, most likely, in with the 2 hooded boys to help increase their chances of adoption.
Sadly, we have 2 rats that we have to have put to sleep due to health issues. This is not a decision that we take lightly, but we would rather have them put to sleep than to let them suffer. They are both, slowly, dying and rather than then linger, we have made the decision to put them to sleep and let them pass on with some dignity and without prolonging their suffering.
This will also leave a blue hooded alone as well, so we will set him up with a cage mate as well before adopting him out.
I do know the litters of mine that we are expecting will be very pretty and should go fast, which is a good thing. All dumbo, the father to 2 of the litters is a black verigated split cap, while one mom is a tan solid and the other mom is a dove berkshire with a ribbon blaze. I am really looking forward to these litters and expecting them both to be large litters, since both have been on a soy free diet for some time now.
Well, I guess that is all for now. Wednesday I am doing a large transport down to Lebanon, so we are geting busier by the day. We get to load up the car tomorrow, mostly and then load up all of the rats on Wednesday, so we can get down there so we have time to visit as well.
Tami
Social Rats Adoption and Rescue
Everyone got a chicken and baby food supplement tonight, so that helps also with keeping them on a healthy diet as well. I have some yogurt and some broccoli for later on in the week and next week. Having 30 cages of rats is not easy to try to give supplements to, but I do what I can. Thankfully 7 of them are going into foster later this week with another almost 30 that have been reserved, so that will bring the numbers down considerably. Still have a bunch of litters to work with, but once the numbers thin a bit, it will seriously help with making time for that.
We have 1 girl and 4 boys left from the litter coing available on March 25th and have another litter that will be available on April 7th. Not counting the 4 older boys that I still need to find homes for. A pair of himi boys and 2 black hooded boys. I will be moving some dumbos, most likely, in with the 2 hooded boys to help increase their chances of adoption.
Sadly, we have 2 rats that we have to have put to sleep due to health issues. This is not a decision that we take lightly, but we would rather have them put to sleep than to let them suffer. They are both, slowly, dying and rather than then linger, we have made the decision to put them to sleep and let them pass on with some dignity and without prolonging their suffering.
This will also leave a blue hooded alone as well, so we will set him up with a cage mate as well before adopting him out.
I do know the litters of mine that we are expecting will be very pretty and should go fast, which is a good thing. All dumbo, the father to 2 of the litters is a black verigated split cap, while one mom is a tan solid and the other mom is a dove berkshire with a ribbon blaze. I am really looking forward to these litters and expecting them both to be large litters, since both have been on a soy free diet for some time now.
Well, I guess that is all for now. Wednesday I am doing a large transport down to Lebanon, so we are geting busier by the day. We get to load up the car tomorrow, mostly and then load up all of the rats on Wednesday, so we can get down there so we have time to visit as well.
Tami
Social Rats Adoption and Rescue
Friday, March 12, 2010
New rescues and breeders - Social Rats activity
We have, in the past few days, taken in more rescues. Athena, a little 4 week old girl, found in an apartment building. The person who found her went to all of the apartments in the building to see if she belonged to anyone, but no luck, so we are going to assume that she was meant to be a feeder but, as luck would have it, she escaped and found a local rescuer to take her in. She was brought to us by someone who works with a local trap/neuter/release program, so she took her in hoping to be able to find her home. She found me through Craigslist (to be referred to as CL from this point further) and rather than taking her to a pet store, which she thought to be her only option, she brought her to me. She is tiny and scared, but is being housed with some very social girls to help with her socialization and I will begin working with her this weekend. I wanted to give her a few days to relax and get adjusted before working with her. I want her stress level to go down first, as she may have actually escaped from the snake cage as she is terrified, but seems to want human interaction, just afraid of it, at the moment.
Kitty and Maggie are a couple of older rescues that we took in, they are about a year and a year and a half old and they are the ones caring for Athena.
I also took in a group of rats for my breeding program as well. The mom, JoJo, is a beautiful black verigated dumbo and she came with 12 beautiful babies. Permission was obtained to breed them when I picked them up as I will never breed without permission. We also took in 3 males, 1 of which is already reserved.
Cameron and Little Boy Blue have been returned from their foster home, unfortunately, they have lice, so we are quaranting them and treating the lice. Mites was first suspected, due to the use of Carefresh, but it was later determined to be rat lice, most likely transferred from a rat that took up housing in their car and later died there (wild rat) and transferred via human touch, from car, to human to rats.
I am going to pick up 2 more rescues tonight, which are coming in because of allergies. That is going to be a bit of a trek, but because of the severity of the allergies, we are all left with little choice. I would not feel comfortable telling this woman that she would have to wait and deal with the allergies because I didn't feel like going anywhere tonight.
So, now we also have a new gate up, to block off the rat area from the rest of the house, to help keep our little one away from the rats and my mealworm colony. THis also means that I do not have to worry about having that section of the house child proof, which makes me feel better. The gate is a great addition and was paid for, thankfully, with donations and adoption fees. This helps to give me more leeway in cleaning cages and socializing, since I do not have to worry about protecting rats from the little one. THis also means that evaluation can wait for a day or 2 when they come in, so they can relax from the whole situation.
We are still working with the study, the other rattery got a virus from ours from some rats we brought in that had not been in quarantine long enough. We lost a couple here and the virus travelled to her rattery as well. We have completed a quarantine of more than 30 days, to be safe, and the virus is now finishing up on her end as well. Unfortunately, it claimed, in total, 3 litters of babies during pregnancy. The last was last night on her end. It claimed one of mine and 2 of hers.
It is our hope and our belief that by this time next year, if somethign like this happens again, that our rats will not be affected by it like they were this time. Taking the rats off of soy helped to clear just about everyone up though. Either the virus ran it's course in that time, or the the soy was depressing the immune system that much that when no longer offered, it gave their immune systems a chance to recover. I did notice, however, that those who would not eat the lab blocks are the ones who were affected the least or not at all by this virus.
Well, I guess that's everything for the day. Will update again in a few days on how everything is going. At the moment, I am restriction feeding, meaning that I give them just a bit more than they would normally eat in a 24 hour period so they are not able to selectively eat as much. on the 21st we will be going to the All Animal Expo to get more mealworms, we are looking to a get a few thousand this time. The ones I have now are breeding, don't get me wrong, but I want to seriously increase my colony so that I can keep to feeding the rats the worms as their protein source.
Tami
Social Rats Adoption and Rescue
Kitty and Maggie are a couple of older rescues that we took in, they are about a year and a year and a half old and they are the ones caring for Athena.
I also took in a group of rats for my breeding program as well. The mom, JoJo, is a beautiful black verigated dumbo and she came with 12 beautiful babies. Permission was obtained to breed them when I picked them up as I will never breed without permission. We also took in 3 males, 1 of which is already reserved.
Cameron and Little Boy Blue have been returned from their foster home, unfortunately, they have lice, so we are quaranting them and treating the lice. Mites was first suspected, due to the use of Carefresh, but it was later determined to be rat lice, most likely transferred from a rat that took up housing in their car and later died there (wild rat) and transferred via human touch, from car, to human to rats.
I am going to pick up 2 more rescues tonight, which are coming in because of allergies. That is going to be a bit of a trek, but because of the severity of the allergies, we are all left with little choice. I would not feel comfortable telling this woman that she would have to wait and deal with the allergies because I didn't feel like going anywhere tonight.
So, now we also have a new gate up, to block off the rat area from the rest of the house, to help keep our little one away from the rats and my mealworm colony. THis also means that I do not have to worry about having that section of the house child proof, which makes me feel better. The gate is a great addition and was paid for, thankfully, with donations and adoption fees. This helps to give me more leeway in cleaning cages and socializing, since I do not have to worry about protecting rats from the little one. THis also means that evaluation can wait for a day or 2 when they come in, so they can relax from the whole situation.
We are still working with the study, the other rattery got a virus from ours from some rats we brought in that had not been in quarantine long enough. We lost a couple here and the virus travelled to her rattery as well. We have completed a quarantine of more than 30 days, to be safe, and the virus is now finishing up on her end as well. Unfortunately, it claimed, in total, 3 litters of babies during pregnancy. The last was last night on her end. It claimed one of mine and 2 of hers.
It is our hope and our belief that by this time next year, if somethign like this happens again, that our rats will not be affected by it like they were this time. Taking the rats off of soy helped to clear just about everyone up though. Either the virus ran it's course in that time, or the the soy was depressing the immune system that much that when no longer offered, it gave their immune systems a chance to recover. I did notice, however, that those who would not eat the lab blocks are the ones who were affected the least or not at all by this virus.
Well, I guess that's everything for the day. Will update again in a few days on how everything is going. At the moment, I am restriction feeding, meaning that I give them just a bit more than they would normally eat in a 24 hour period so they are not able to selectively eat as much. on the 21st we will be going to the All Animal Expo to get more mealworms, we are looking to a get a few thousand this time. The ones I have now are breeding, don't get me wrong, but I want to seriously increase my colony so that I can keep to feeding the rats the worms as their protein source.
Tami
Social Rats Adoption and Rescue
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