[JohnBloch]

Ok ok ok, before you tell me to do a search, I allready have... I know about a "new house" sneeze, but i'm still concerned...

I bought stella three days ago at a petshop that had some small rats that they were selling *sniffle* as feeders....

She was not an impulse or pitty buy, I had been wanting a small female for a while and she seemed like the perfect little girl....

She is a ruby eyed tope color, and at first I was going to ask about the swaggering side to side motion she makes when she is sitting still, but I know why she does that now...

but as the subject line states, she is a sneezer, a nose rubber, a regular old chatter box...

I did not handle her in the store, so I dont know if the sneezes came from the move or if she perviously had them...

the one thing i am worrying about is that she has a little bit of that red junk on one of her nostrils, and she keeps on rubbing her face...

stella is a very active rat, and even though I havent seen her eat, she has either hidden or eaten most of her food...

the one thing I think I should mention is that she is on Softsorbant naturally scented lavender bedding (very strong scent)... do you think this could cause a problem? my Girlfriend uses it with her mice (ick) and she said I should use it with stella... I was kind of opting for something regular, but she gave me the rest of her bag....

do you think that could be causing it?

 

[Forensic]

Anything that smells strongly can irritate their noses, or she could be allergic to it (speaking for myself, lavender makes me ill. )

 

[Poppyseed]

Yeah, rats need unscented bedding. Something like Carefresh, Yesterdays news (I use the cat litter bag of this because it's cheaper and comes in larger sizes. It's the same thing as the small animal one, unscented of course), fabric bedding (like fleece or towels without the loop) or aspen. Those are pretty much it as far as the allowable bedding for rats. I think Harlan makes some nice bedding as well like the diamond soft and other varieties but you can't get those in the store you have to order them.

Get her off the that bedding! I had my rats sneezing just by a fabric detergent I was using for their bedding. I switched to unscented detergent and the sneezes went down dramatically. Switch to a more rat safe bedding and see if she is still sneezing with the porphyrin around her nose for a couple of days. If she is after 3-5 days I would take her to the vet. You don't want a respiratory infection going too long as it can cause permanent damage.

And does she have a friend? What kind of cage is she in? If she is in an aquarium that could be another reason for her sneezing. Not saying she is but an aquarium holds in scent and urine smell like nothing else. Hopefully she is in a wire cage!