Respiratory infection, how much tetracycline to give?

Question
Hi Natasha,

One of my mice started making squeaking sounds as she breathes. It looks like she's having a hard time breathing, rocking back and forth with each breath and is making yelpy/squeaky sounds. She's too young for it to be cancer, and I'm using aspen bedding, not something which might irritate her respiratory system, so by ruling those things out i'm almost certain it's a bacterial infection.

I saw your other answers suggesting to use tetracycline, but they are unclear on how much to use. I want to give her the right dose, but I'm not sure what volume you're assuming is in a small and large water bottle. The teracycline I got comes in packets of dust, with 500mg in each packet. I have a micro scale so I can weigh it pretty precicely, and the mass of dust in each packet is actually 2 grams, so there's a 1:4 ratio of tetracycline to other stuff in the packet.

I was hoping you could help me figure out how many miligrams of the antibiotic to use per ounce or mL of water. I've already made the concentrated paste and made her take a bit of it.

Also, thanks for being one of the few to understand that not everybody can afford to pay 90 dollars for an initial vet visit for a mouse, and for actually offering a home-remedy.

Here in Canada the vet wouldn't even sell me any antibiotics that they use for mice, but where I come from ammoxicilin and other things that are perscribed for pneumonia can be acquired at pharmacies. Pretty ridiculous.

Answer
Dear Raz,

When I say large bottle I mean about 10-12 oz. One capsule of powder is 1/4 teaspoon by volume and contains 250 mg of Tetracycline. I don't have a small enough scale to know if this is the same ratio as your powder.

So if one of your packets is 500 mg, take one half of that for 12 ounces of water, which is about 1/3 liter. That makes a mixture of 750 mg in 1 liter (1000 ml). I'd better let you figure it out from here because if I mess up my math I'll mess you up. I think you can go from here.

Here in the US you can only get the Tetracycline over the counter for fish; but you can order many medications at pigeon supply stores. If I knew mouse dosages I might make that recommendation as well, but I don't want to kill any mice.

Best of luck : ))

squeaks,

Natasha