Well, I have not had much of a chance to do any meaningful research lately. I am still trying to determine if soy in a diet will affect mega colon, but have not had much luck, so that may have nothing to do with soy.
So, here is an undate on the rattery and the soy study. I am in the process now of treating everyone with Revolution because I had soem rescues come in that looked they had rat lice, so will be treating everyone, just in case. Any rats that are up for adoption have already been treated and I will be doing another treatment on Thursday, once some of my new litters are 2 weeks old. I will be doing the last part of the rattery in 2 weeks, since I had a recent birth just a couple of days ago. This has nothing to do with the soy, but did want to do a rattery update as well while I am doing this. Also, the guys I was planning to have put to sleep, I wanted to hold off on, to see if we could give them just a few more weeks or even days in this life. Meeko has since gotten better, but I do check him daily to keep an eye on his condition. Papa on the other hand, I am not going to have a choice with him and, currently, we are looking at just a couple of days now. Keep in mind, this has nothing to do with adoption status, as these are sanctuary rats. This is because of illness and quality of life.
I hae 2 girls from my first litter of the year, Harmony and Charisma that have been on a soy free diet and are now about 9 weeks old. I have not yet observed estrus in them, so it seems that my theory about the sexual maturity will be correct. Most rats fed a "normal" diet have already have experienced their first heat by now. I am looking for signs of heat like submitting to a mount by a cage mate, bouncing, more hyper, presenting of their rear for mating, anything that could lead me to believe that they are in heat and I have not yet seen any signs of it, which is a good thing.
For breeding, I have discovered a couple of things so far with my rats. One of my males that I purchased from another breeder seems to be infertile as I have put multiple females in with him with no luck. This is not a case of the male and female just being together for a night or 2, but weeks or months. I had Squeaka in with him for almost a month, with no luck. I moved her in with Z, one of my blazed breeders and he got her almost immediately. Mindy who has been in with him for almost 3 months now still has not concieved. So I believe that the soy I had him on actually made him infertile. The research I have done so far has shown me that soy can have 2 major negative affects on males. The first would be, like with NoNo, that he is infertile. It messes with the fertility of male rats. The second, which is likely to affect pet owners as well, is it can increase hormone related aggression. Because soy messes with the sex hormones in all rats, in males it can (not will, but can) lead to hormone related aggression. By feeding a soy free diet, this may be able to be limited. I am not saying that soy WILL cause hormone related aggression, nor am I saying that soy is the ONLY cause for hormone related aggression in males, just that is can, well, make it worse, I guess.
We have only had one major respiratory related issue, but that was our fault, not soy or non soy related. We use modified storage boxes for some of our litters, to save space, money and mess. We have one that has excellent ventilation, however we did not take into account for multiple adult rats in one of the cages when it came to ventilation and it caused ammonia build up. Once I realized how bad it was, I removed the rats into a wire cage, but Squeaka, who was already pregnant, did get a URI from it. It was not a sneezy thing, or even congested, but I could tell that she ws not feeling well from her fluffed fur. It did cause the loss of her litter. She has since recovered without incident. We gave her a 7 day round of amoxicillin and she ws back to normal after delivery and 2 days of meds.
We have had no major sneezing, no congestion this month and all of our rats have been acting healthy and lively. With the fact that we are now 2 months into the soy free, I have noticed drastic changes already in the rats. At this point we have 47 adult and weaned rats and 11 litters of babies ranging from 1 to 18 babies. If I had to make a guess, I would say that we have, goodness, around 120 rats here at the moment, with all of the babies. and even with this many rats in a room, we still have minimal illness. Now, keep in mind that our litters are both those we have bred and those who came to use pregnant and/or nursing. So this is not like I personally bred 11 litters this year so far. Only 4 of those litters are ones that I have personally bred. 1 that will be ready on the 7th, 1 that will be available around the beginning of May and 2 that will be available around the middle of May.
I have actually been using a minimal amount of meds lately, more that was thrown out than I have used, just because I had it mixed for too long. I did a transport to my facility down in IN and we did have some magor issues there with the rats that were transported, but do not believe that to be due to diet or immune system. That would have to be due to 30 rats be backed into a little Ford Focus with 2 smokers. So, cramped conditions, the fact that we smoke, and the weather all had an affect on the rats and quite a few did come down with issues but most have responded well to the meds. I was expecting issues with the transport, simply because of the cramped quarters. Our lab boys, which were among those transported, are the ones having the worst issues and the hardest time recovering. But, you have to keep in mind, they were not raised like regular rats, they had not been exposed to things our rats are normally exposed to in litter, and they were fed a high soy diet for most of their 2 years. All of which has made them weaker, immunity wise. However, other than just a couple out of the bunch, most of them have responded to the meds and cleared up quickly.
At this point, having been open for more than a year now, we have not have 1 case of cancer and I am hoping that feeding soy free, that we will not. My condolences to those ppl who have had to deal with cancer, as I am not one of them. Even though I have raised and owned rats, off and on, for 20 years now, I have never had a rat with cancer, never had to deal with tumors. Even with all of the rats that I have taken in this past year, none had cancer or any type of tumors. We have one rat, a hairless male, that came in with a lump that I thought may be cancer, because it did not come to a head and pop like a normall abscess. He had it for more than 3 months before it finally opened up. Come to find out it was not cancer or an abscess, but an severely ingrown hair, which hairless rats are easy to get. While it was not as bad, gross wise, as dealing with an abscess, it was still pretty gross. Scale of 1 to 10, I would put abscss at a 7 and ingrown hair at a 6.
THat should cover everything, if I think of anything else, I will post a continuation of this at a later date.
Tami
Social Rats Adoption and Rescue
I saw a post you put on Craigslist about soy & rats. It opened my eyes to what was wrong with my rat Cullen. After a year of feeding "high quality" Mazuri lab blocks and having him be nothing but skin and bones with hair missing, I bought a bag of the Tropical Carnival rat food. His brother Nevada was fat and happy on lab blocks, but Cullen was half his size and clearly not thriving. A week into the diet change and Cullen's hair was growing back. Two weeks later he was a different rat--just as big as his brother but with a thick, dark, soft velveteen coat.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting that about soy--I might never have tried something other than what I was told was best for them.
I already feed my carnivores (dogs & cats) a raw diet and have for over 3 years after feeding kibble for 2 years without liking what I saw it was doing to my dog.