New baby rat not walking straight

Question
Hope you can help. My son (who is 4) and I went to the reptile store to find
out some information on spiders, and then he saw the feeder rats. Well I am
sure you can imagine what happened next. Goodbye spider, hello rats!! I
realize that the rats were breed to be feeders and I steered him towards two
bigger ones that seemed to be feeding on their own well. But the one smaller
of the two is having what seems like a hard time staying stable, like her
equilibrium is off. She seems too young to tell if she is male or female, she's
a cream colour and looks as though she will have red/pink eyes. She's eating,
playful, and loves my son. I am just worried that her unstableness is a sign of
worse health problems to come. I am hoping that maybe she is just young
and will grow out of it. Your insight would be very helpful to me as I am not
quite ready to have "that" talk with my little boy just yet. hope to hear back,
Trish

Answer
Hi

For starters, you must find out right away about the sex of these rats. Rats mate as young as 5 weeks old and have litters up to 21 in some cases.  You can usually tell from birth the sex of rats but a novice rat owner will have some trouble. Usually around 3 weeks they have testicles. Please refer to my site ASAP to identify the sex of your new rats if they are opposite sex you need to get them apart if its not too late. Rats go in heat every 5 days.

As far as being unstable, if the rat is at least 4 weeks and up, the rat should not be really wobbly and should be able to run leaps and bounds.

What may be wrong is an inner ear infection. This can cause the rat to be off balance like you suggested, because the inflammation on the rats 8th cranial nerve (which controls equilibrium) causes them to be off balance and may even cause them to tilt their head to the side.
You will have to find a vet at this point to get the rat antibiotics. It will not go away without treatment and will eventually go to the rats brain and cause death if this goes on long.
If you need a vet, let me know and I can help you find one that treats rats.  If you return the rat, it will be fed to snakes and already this rat has domesticated herself by attaching to your child, that would be really sad if this happened.  

Please read over my website about rat care, feeding etc.... to learn about what litter to use and not use (never pine, cedar or corn cob bedding) and a tank is also not to be used, but a nice roomy cage.

I am just hoping you have two rats that are the same sex.

Again, here is the URL to my site.  You can compare the photos with your rats to see about sexing them.


http://www.freewebs.com/crittercity/rathealthinformation.htm


Next, read GETTING STARTED and also PROPER DIETS AND RATS.

hope this helps and good luck. Remember, I can help find a vet that treats rats. All I need is your zip code. The petstore, they wont care, this was meant to die in the jaws of a snake  and they wont cover vet expenses since it wasnt sold as a pet or intended to be a pet.