How to Perform Your Ratty Health Exam Exams are a critical part to the care and well being of your rats. You should give each of your rats a health exam, twice each and every week, for the entirety of their lives. Because rats are so little, and have such short live spans, possible health problems can come up fast, and quickly grow out of control if not caught and treated in the early stages. It only takes a couple days for something minor to turn into something major. It should only take you about a minute per rat, so it is not that time consuming or difficult to maintain. We find doing our rats' health exams during their play time is the most convenient. We do them every Sunday and Thursday. Although you will probably not have any real health issues until your rats are much older, it is important that you start these regular exams on your rats as soon as you adopt them. Even at the young age of five weeks. Why? There are several reasons. Young rats, although less likely, can also become sick/injured. The younger you can start doing the exams on your rats, the quicker they will learn to accept the process of going through an exam. By doing regular exams on your healthy young rats you will quickly learn what "normal" looks and feels like, so when something does go wrong, you will immediately be able to tell the difference. Until you learn what "normal" is, you may be somewhat clueless the first dozen exams or so. This is fine. As your experience grows, you will become more and more comfortable with it. Soon enough you will be able to tell if the slightest little thing is off with your rats. The Visual Exam... Watch your rats. Are they behaving normally for their personality? Is your rats' activity level normal? Watch and make sure that none of your rats are limping, holding their head at a constant tilt, or have their sides hunched up in pain. Watch your rats' breathing? It's a bad sign if they are gasping for air, heaving their sides in and out, wheezing, sneezing, coughing (which looks like hiccups), breathing more rapidly, or in general have labored breathing. Check your rats' cage litter to make sure it contains well formed poops with no sign of diarrhea. Also check the litter for signs of blood which is bad. (Warning. If you feed them tomatoes, the juices and left overs can easily look like blood in the litter.) The External Exam... Hold each of your rats up to your ear and listen to them breath. Normal breathing barely makes any noise. If their breath has a squeaky or wheezy quality to it, that means trouble. Check your rats' eyes to make sure they are clear, bright, and free of red discharge (a rat's tears are not clear but brick red in color.) A little touch of sleep in the eye is ok. Look for any swelling in the eye lids. Check your rats' noses to make sure they are clean and free of red discharge. A bad or sweet smell from the nose means trouble. Check your rats' ears to make sure they are clean and free of odor. Here, Neal checks Nona's eyes, ears, and nose. Check your rats' toes, tail, and nose to make sure they are their normal healthy color. If they have turned blueish or pale, it is a bad sign. Check your rats' teeth to make sure they are not overgrown. The easiest way to check your rats' teeth is to hold them up and gently gather the skin at the back of their neck as if you were trying to scruff them. This opens the mouth and makes the teeth visible. Healthy rat teeth will be yellow in color. This picture demonstrates how to check your rats teeth. Check your rats' feet for any signs of sores. Check your rats' nails to make sure they are not overgrown. Check your rats' private area to see that it is clean, healthy, and shows no signs of blood or puss discharge. Here, I check Baku's vagina, urethra, and anus for any signs of blood or lumps. Check your rats' hair to make sure it looks normal and healthy. (It is normal for an elderly rat to have a shabby coat, and rexes are prone to bald spots.) Feel your rats' entire head, neck, and body for any signs of wounds, scabs, lumps, or bumps, of any size. Check to see if your rats are dehydrated by pulling up the skin at the back of their shoulder blades and letting it go. The skin should bounce back into place fairly quickly. If the skin is very slow to move back into place, it means your rat is dehydrated. Here, I check to see if Baku is dehydrated. With intact females, they are prone to developing mammary tumors. The quicker you can detect these growths the cheaper they are to remove and the safer the operation is for the rat. The best way to detect these tumors is to gather up the loose skin and feel along each side of your rat's body, from just under the armpit, to all the way down into their pelvis, rolling the skin between your fingers feeling for lumps. Here, I am feeling along Baku's sides for mammary tumors. She has experienced so many of these health exams, that she is completely relaxed and licking my thumb. The Internal Exam... The internal exam is tricky and dangerous if not done right. Do not do this if you don't feel comfortable with it. You can kill your rat if this is not done correctly. One thing that can help is to have your veterinarian show you how to do this. What you want to do is palpate your rat's body cavity to feel for enlarged organs or cysts that might be growing in there. Hold your rat up by supporting them under their armpits, and let them rest their feet on the floor or your belly. Now, with your thumb on one side, and two fingers on the other, massage and manipulate their body cavity, from just under the ribs, down to their pelvis. It is important that you are firm, yet gentle when doing this. You do not want to squeeze so hard that you are rupturing organs, or breaking bones! You want to use the minimal amount of pressure you can, but still be able to feel what is going on. Here, I feel along Baku's body cavity for internal lumps and bumps. In general their cavity should feel fairly squishy and empty. You can sometimes feel the kidneys, right up next to the spine, just poking out from underneath the rib cage. These will feel hard, and are about the size of a pea. You will also be able to occasionally feel poops as they are traveling down the intestines, so don't let those worry you. They will feel like the shape of their poop, and you will sometimes feel one, or dozens if their intestines are full. If their bladder is abnormally full, it can be felt down by the pelvis. If you feel a lump that shouldn't be there, do not squeeze or prod at it. If this is an organ, it could rupture. Instead, take your rat in to your vet for a more thorough examination. This will be over whelming at first, but as you gain experience, you will quickly be able to learn the difference between what is trouble, and what isn't. Weight... You should weigh your rats once every other week and keep a record of it. A food scale works well for this and the best kind of scale is a digital scale that weighs ounces down to the point. It's easiest to weigh your rat using a small travel cage. Put the empty cage on the scale first and zero out the scale. Now put your rat in the cage and the scale will give you the exact weight of your rat. Nona can't wait to see how much she weighs! An average weight for females is 13oz, and for males it's 20oz. Unusually small rats can weigh less, and unusually large rats can weigh more. Your rats should gain weight until they reach their adult sized body, and then they should level off. If your rats continue to gain weight much past the average weight for their sex, it means they are getting too many treats. Decrease or completely cut out the treats in your rat's diet. An obese rat is an unhealthy rat. If you haven't changed your rat's diet and he/she starts loosing weight, it could indicate a serious problem, so keep a close eye out for any weight loss. If your rat is loosing weight, it could be caused by an illness, an inability to hold food properly, or an inability to chew food properly. Find out what the problem is and treat it. To help them gain the weight back, add a high calorie paste to their diet such as Nutra-Cal. Miscellaneous... I strongly recommend that you purchase Debbie Ducommun's "Rat Health Care" booklet so that you can learn how to diagnose these symptoms and what they mean. You can buy it from her site at The Rat Fan Club for only $5 plus shipping. I do explain some of the above symptoms, among other useful information, in the "General Health Concerns" page within this Guidebook.