Baby Rat Health

Question
What can cause rats droppings to change colour? Is it common for baby rats to not eat or drink much when they first come home?

Answer
Well, sometimes when you first bring baby rats home, they may just be either a little stressed about the change in environment, or maybe even so excited that they may not eat or drink a lot.  I hope that however they ARE eating and drinking a little.  If not at all, that would be a cause for concern.  The other thing is that very young babies will not eat a lot at all because they are still so tiny, it doesn't take a lot to fill them up.  Try giving them tasty foods and see if they will eat, like a tiny piece of cheese or a sweet grape.  I've never seen a rat turn those down :)

As far as the droppings, as long as there ARE droppings, you know they must be eating.  Rats have a very fast metabolic system and there are droppins from something they just ate a few hours ago, not 24 hours as in humans.  You didn't say what varying colors the droppings are, but it could be the difference in the colors of the food they are eating, as in humans as well.  But if they are reddish, it could be blood in the stool, however that is unlikely that it would be coming from both rats at the same time.  It would be good if you could isolate each rat for say a day, but feed them both exactly the same foods and monitor their stools.  If both rat's stools are the same color during that day, whether the color is light or dark or whatever, it's likely there is nothing wrong other than the colors of the foods they are eating are causing the stool color to vary.

Please let me know if there is anything else I can answer.