fat rat.

Question
hello! my female rats, Mimi is 10 months old. we moved house in september and about a month later she got a really fat belly. its only on the tummy, her head and legs are still the same size, but you can see her spine indented with fat pushing up around the edges. i wasnt sure if it was fat, or a tumour or constipation because the the odd way she carries it. when i give her a warm bath she sits there purring while she poos away, which makes me think its constipation. we have 6 other female rats and they all live together in a large cage. Mimi loves her dinners and drinks a lot. we have thought about putting her in a seperate cage to carefully control her diet but dont really want to as she loves her sisters and we dont want to seperate them.

any advice would be greatly appreciated, we dont know what to do with her!

many thanks, kathy.

Answer
Hi Kathy

usually rats do not get fat from over eating, but instead, they get fat from eating the wrong foods that are high in fats and protein, which they must avoid anyhow since protein that exceeds 15% can cause kidney damage.

Sometimes there are other causes for bloating in the abdomen. If it is abdominal ascites , this could mean problems with the liver. Do you have a vet that is an exotic vet and not a general vet that sees exotics? If not I can give you a few names of vets that care for rats, but I am thinking at this point this may not be a good thing, esp if she is only big in her belly and you can see her spine.