Rats Breathing...

Question
Hello,
I spoke with you recently about my two rats, Wiley and Rufus. Thank you for your reply. It was so helpful!
I took the rats to the vet and insisted that she gave them more antibiotics. She was going to send me away with "Yes rats are very prone to this and there is not much we can do". They are now on Synulox and Baytril but they are not eating it anymore. I don't think they like the taste of the Synulox. I am getting quite worried about it because now they are taking no drugs and I am not feeding them much to try and get them to take their medicine. Rufus is far too ill to go through the stress of medicine being forced down his throat twice a day. Do you have any advice for me please?
Thanks a lot,
Kate

Answer
Are you mixing their meds with anything?

Really, while your rat might be quite ill, in the long wrong it's much better to stress him out for a minute while you syringe him the meds than to let it go untreated which will only cause him to become more ill, and that will not end nicely.

Try holding him against your chest and syringing just a bit of the meds every few seconds. In between the breaks coddle him and talk sweetly to him and give him scritches on the head. Mixing the meds with small amounts of baby food or pudding can help the rats take it in alot easier, even if you are still needing to syringe it to them.

I know that when I give my rats meds it only takes literally a second. I put them in the foot ball hold, or I hold them gently against my chest. I place the syringe inside their cheek squeeze it in as fast as they can swallow (no faster) and 1/2 a second later, they are done and fine! I have thought about taking a video of me doing this to one of my rats with just sugar water or baby food so that people are better able to understand how it's being done. It's really rather simple once you get the hang of it and because it's done SO quickly, the rat is barely able to know what is going on before they are back in the cage again with their friends :) I will take a video when I go in to give them all lunch later and then send it to you in a follow up to this question.

Let me know if you have any more questions in the meantime.