[Axl]

My younger sister has a female rat named EV who is just over 1 year old. Around two months ago she developed a small lump, which has grown to about the size of a quarter. It's soft and movable and doesn't impede her movement or seem to cause her any discomfort. About a month ago, my sister noticed that EV's urine had turned reddish brown, like there is blood in her urine. She never has normal colored urine anymore, but the severity of how much blood is in it seems to vary. Other than these things she is eating and drinking and acting completely normal. Her relationship with her cagemate Point Break is also unaffected, although Point Break seems to want to clean EV's tail and butt area more than before this all started.

We do not have a vet close to us that will take small animals. There is one small animal vet who is pretty far away, but they are too expensive for us. Is there anything we can do for EV?

 

[Mkd]

She should be taken to a vet one way or another. That is a tumor that rats commonly get and will continue to grow and should eventually be removed. It might be pressing against her kidney causing a problem.

 

[ratbusters]

This is the sort of thing that really only a vet would be able to diagnose, especially the blood in urine. We have experienced this with a couple of our rats - one had a UTI which needed antibiotics and was no doubt causing the rat pain while urinating, and in another instance the rat had suspected bladder stones which was treated through dietary changes. If you can, look for any signs of pain/discomfort while passing urine. If you notice any, it might even be worth a phone call to the far away vet to see if they would offer any advice/zoom consultation/etc. All the best with her.

 

[Axl]

Thanks for the replies. She doesn't seem have any pain while urinating. We took our previous rat to this vet, and we weren't really happy with them. They didn't have any real experience with small animals, and it was very expensive. Our rat had an abscess on his foot and also had some blood in his urine, and all they did was prescribe him some antibiotics which didn't seem to help. We ended up treating the abscess with Epsom salts and it eventually went away. Given our experiences with them in the past and how expensive it was for really nothing, I doubt my parents would consent to going back there. I'm really looking for anything over the counter. My sister has started feeding them flaxseed, as she read that was good for tumors. She also read that turkey tail mushroom extract can be good for this type of thing. It may not help much, but we're just looking for anything we could easily try.