[Lyd1012]

Hi everyone,

My rat Cheese is squeaking when he wakes up, but is OK once he seems to have cleared his throat. He's been to the vet and it is a mild URI.
He was prescribed sulfatrim and metacam.
Ive been looking online at sulfatrim and it isn't effective against myco, which I know is quite common, I've had a rat before that had flare ups and ultimately died of pneumonia 😭 so I'm scared of this happening again.
Ive tried it for 3 days now and it is awful for them, they hate the stuff, but I've got it in them. I have been medicating the other 2 aswell, becuase I told the vet I was getting some young rats to add to the group and he thought it best.
One rat Dobby always has a bit of a mucus issue, I believe he has allergies to be honest. He's quite a sneezy rat in general, always has been, but again I want to make sure there's nothing in it.
Anyway, I wondered if anyone with a lot of rat experience could advise whether I should ask the vet for a different antibiotics, like doxycycline?
I had leftover baytril so I had already tried that before the vet visit and it didn't do anything.
The good thing is it's not getting worse as such, but not getting better either.

Thanks for reading.

 

[a1phanine]

Hi Lyd

In my experience vets cannot get doxycycline in oral form for small animals in the UK
It is unfortunate we cannot get as good care for our rats as in the US.

For me the vet prescribed baytrill, which didnt work after 2 courses, then metcam and Septrin which is a type of cotrimoxazole antibiotic.
I'm not a vet but online looks like sulfatrim is for gastroenterological problems.

Metcam smelt and tasted disgusting so I could not administer it even mixed with smelly foods the rats wouldnt take it, I force syringe fed them it twice but it was so stressful for them it wasnt worth it so I stopped. Turned out they had tumours anyway so it didnt help. I think metcam is an anti-inflammatory.

Good luck