My 3 month old Dumbo is scratching alot

Question
Hi There,

I have 2 female Dumbo Rats, Toffee and Fudge. They are both about 3 months old and are litter mates. They have CareFresh bedding and cat litter in their dirt tray (brand recommended by petshop)
They come out the cage quite alot onto the floor which is carpet and lino.
Recently ive noticed Toffee scratching alot with her back foot under her belly. Fudge does it a bit but not nearly as much as Toffee. Toffee seems to be doing it every few minutes. They are both white with some cinnamon colouring and pink eyes. Ive checked their fur for any nasties and cant see any. Their skin seems ok too.
Is it worth taking them to the vets to check for mites??

Thanks

Vicky (UK)

P.S The pics of your ratties are so cute

Answer
Hi Vicky

Thank you so much for, first of all, telling me where your located. Alot of times the names of medications are different and if I don't know that your in the UK I am liable to say that I never heard of this or that and its just under a foreign name.

Before I continue on though, I do want to know what diet they are being fed. Scratching due to itchy skin can be related to allergies due to their diet. A diet that is high in protein (protein should not exceed 18
nd and ideally it is preferred to be 12 to 15ut it is really difficult when you have cute rattie's begging to share what your eating and before you know it, you just fed your rat all the protein he needed in his diet for the day!

Commercial brand rat food, at least the stuff they sell here in the United States, are mostly seed mixes with dried hard kernel corn, sunflower seeds and other nuts that are sky high in protein and the dried corn is a known carcinogen due to a nasty toxin created by a fungus found in the dried corn. Yup they package it and sell it for our pets. Scary. I cannot legally name the names of these foods but will say that they are top name brands.  Anyhow, lets start with the diet first before I send you off to the vets. I am not real into loading up baby rats with pesticides for mites unless we really need to. Mites do need to be killed off (this goes for lice too) since they can cause problems if they remain long term, such as anemia and skin infections from scabs from scratching.

I will wait till you let me know what they are being fed first and we can go from there...

Sandy