Alright, as the title explains I have rescuced 2 baby rats. Ill give you some basic info about myself, and the story behind this. I have alot of animals of all diferent kinds. At the moment I have 5
bearded dragons, 5 leopard geckos, 2 crested geckos, 1 corn snake, 1 berber skink, 2 budgies, 2 ferrets, 3 cats and last but not least 19 mice! I also have a down payment on two baby corn snakes and im picking them up at the reptile expo in september.
Ive also had a gerbil, a rabbit, guinea pig, hedgehog, rat, 2 other cats, other mice, hampsters and
dwarf hamsters. So as you can see Ive had, and have alot of animal expreience. Well last monday a lady from down my street told us that she had 4 baby mice that she found in her garage, and she had found the mother dead. So we took them in, fed them, helped them go potty, everything your supposed to do. We fed them Enfamil Soy baby formula, using a dropper. We used a digital scale to weigh them to determine how much they should eat, and fed accordingly. we fed every 4 hours. They were about 1 1/2 - 2 weeks old, had quite a bit of fur, but eyes and ears were still closed (i think the ears were anyways). We had them for about 48 hours, before the first one passed around 6 pm that wednesday, two of the others went at around 9 pm, and the last around 11. Well, I miss them terribly! They were my babys, and I loved them like my own. The next night I went back to my house feeling like a mother comming home from the hosiptal with no baby (I know to ppl who have had that happen, I probally seem over dramatic, but thats the best way to desribe how I felt). Well anyways, the next day i had to go to the pet store (oviously not the best place for me to be at this time) to get the other mice food and for awhile now Ive wanted to get a rat or two aswell as my other animals. Well we know basicly everyone at the petstore near us and one of the people from the reptile department was walking over from the small pets area where we were. We started talking and I asked what he was holding, he opened his hand to two ADORABLE baby rats, just taken from their mother, to be food. From other pictures on this site I would guess they were 6 or 7 days old (they have just a little teeny bit of hair, but quite alot of color to the darker one). Well... I was a bit emotional still at the time, and kinda .. rescued them. I quickly bought them and left before I could see him taking any more to be used as food.
Ive been following the instuctions from
the Rat Report and
Rat & Mouse Gazette: Caring for Orphaned Baby Rats to nurse the babys (the same pages I used for the mice) But ive having a few problems with some of the information.
The most important in my eyes is the feeding amount, at the time the rats are 9.2 and 9.1 (theyve been losing weight a little bit they started at 9.8 and 9.7.but the sites said that is normal until they are used to the formula, so im not worrioed about that) So we've multiplyed their weight by 0.05 and got about .45 ml. So thats what weve been feeding them (we started to feed .5 when they were 9.8 and 9.7 but have lowered it a little according to the weight loss). But alot of people of this site say to feed until you can see the whiteness of there full belly. Well Ive never seen that with them.
Im not sure if I shoudl be feeding more or not. I want to make sure they get enough, but it says that its important not to over feed which im afraid of doing. So I dot know what to do! Ive had them since Thurday night and feed them every 3 hours (day and night) but their bellys are never white!
They urinate every feeding, usualy before and after, and poop atleast every second feeding. They are at a temperature of 80 - 90 on the warm side, and about 72 ish on the colder side. They have solid poop and Ive been diluting the solution like the sites say.
Another question I have is how to tell if they are bloated, one of the sites say "Watch for bloat. This is a digestive problem where the stomach fills with gas and is very painful." But it doesnt tell you what bloat looks like.
I think those are all of my questions so far, if I have any more I will ask. Hopefully someone can tell me what to do. Thank you everyone for reading my post and I apoligize for the lenth.
Here are a couple pictures of them.
Day we got them (Thursday)
And yesterday
