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On this blog there is good up to date information on rats. Below to the right are the dates of when I posted stuff. Click on the side ways arowose to see the posts that I wrote for that month. If you would like to read a little about me click on "Me and My Blog." Please feel free to watch the You Tube videos about rats - except for the five random videos that keep coming up, they have nothing to do with rats. I don't know why, also please vote on the serveys and leave comments. Please come back every once in a while because I will be posting things very often, so stay in tune. Feel free to click on the adds, some of them you may find helpful because they will bring you to discount rat cages. Hope this blog is useful. Thanks for reading!

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Sunday, November 8, 2009

Rats and Allergies

Believe it or not, rats can have allergies too. But how do you know? Well, as you may know, I have two rats, a dwarf rat named Chelsey, and a standard rat named LuLu. And I have been noticing some bald spots on LuLu's neck, and earlier I had seen Chelsey chewing on LuLu there. So I figured the minor bald spots were caused by chelsey's aggressive cleaning, they were. But then they started getting bigger and I noticed scabs on the spots too. So I went to PetCo and bought a separate cage for Chelsey, and I was going to separate them until LuLu's bald spots went away. I noticed that LuLu wasn't getting any better. So I did some research and found that a common problem for bald spots and scabs around the neck, shoulders, face chin, and forehead are from allergies. I also found out that common food allergies for rats are peanuts and dairy products. Such as the common rat treat called yogies. I had been giving my rats 2 yogies every day starting right before LuLu's bald spots worsened. So i stopped giving them yogies, and the results have been great. It is rare for a rat to be allergic to or sensitive to most litters though, beside pine or cedar shavings. It also possible for your rat to have eczema, which causes itching.
If you have been noticing bald and scabby spots on your rat, and you think it might be allergic to a treat or the food you are buying him or her, to help speed the process of healing, a topical ointment such as neosporin can help, just watch your rat while it soaks in so it doesn't ingest any of it. There is a chance that bald spots could be related to stress, but that would be for obvious reasons, such as the rat isn't in a healthy, quiet, air conditioned room. Most of my information was from http://www.ratfanclub.org/skin.html
*Take note that to help your rat if it has bald spots, you may need to trim his or her nails. I will be publishing a post about this as soon as I can.*
If you don't think rats are necessarily the pet you are looking for, but want a pet similar to a rat, I would look into a chinchilla. This link is great for the history of chinchillas, and is really interesting.
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Have any questions or comments? Email me at ratmanbv@gmail.com

ratmanbv@gmail.com