Bacchus Residents

Hello again, readers, That's probably the longest title we've ever typed! Today's post is all about introducing the 8 new doe rats who've recently come into our home due to their previous owner having some difficulty managing the treatment for their health. Their day to day care was brilliant, however, a couple of the females unfortunately fell ill, and when their owner acknowledged they could no longer manage, they made the noble and selfless decision to hand them over to someone who could - us. We saw their advert on 'Rat Rescue Network UK' and something about the girls just touched us and we decided to offer a helping hand. All will become clear if you make it to the end of the post (or you can cheat, we will split the post into clearly labelled sections). Amelia: Amelia is a roan dumbo at approximately one year old with no known health conditions. She's a sweet and cheeky doe with bundles of character. Amidala: Amidala is a blue hooded dumb...

Hello again, readers, Firstly, I wanted to add in a brief section to say that I started writing this post with the belief that Derrick was going to make a full recovery. Before Derrick passed away, he had been battling kidney disease and/or failure alongside a persistent UTI (urinary tract infection). I've decided to post a singular blog post with minimal amendments about both Derrick's tremendous battle with his health, and his passing. I appreciate that there will be a lot of information crammed into the one post, but I believe it will show a true representation about the entire process. With that being said, I won't say any more on the matter and will let you get on with reading the post. This post will include a section about what happened prior to medical investigation, and a section about the medical investigation itself. We will break it all down into clearly labelled sections to make it easier for you to pick out the bits you'd prefer to read: Part One - T...

Hello again, readers, It feels as though it may just be easier to simply 'copy' and 'paste' each and every previous blog post to do with Leia having mammary tumours removed. Despite having 4 surgeries within the last 12 months, Leia had to go ahead and tackle surgery number 5. Mammary tumours appear to be all too common with does, but Leia had already been spayed and was taking specialist preventative medication for these tumours - but they still came back - 3 of them. So, we will talk you through everything that Leia went through, once again; PLEASE NOTE THAT THERE WILL BE SURGICAL CONTENT WHICH SOME READERS MAY FIND DISTRESSING. To set the scene, Leia had just come back from the vet after having some medication changes for her  CRD and had also just been given a recent diagnosis of suspected osteoarthritis and/or sciatica type pain - we've already done some posts ( 1 ) ( 2 ) on these topics. We thought we were finally getting on top of managing Leia'...

Hello again, readers, Today we wanted to talk about brothers Bradley and Brandon, both boys had the exact same surgery on the exact same day - what are the chances? Considering the brothers experienced everything together, we thought it would be sensible to talk about everything together. PLEASE NOTE THIS POST CONTAINS SURGICAL CONTENT THAT SOME READERS MAY FIND DISTRESSING. We initially noticed Bradley developed some form of angry looking neoplasia on his scent gland. It was immediately clear that Bradley had been having a nibble - he had a couple of blood stains in his fur. We knew whatever it was had to be removed - ideally before Bradley removed it himself. We booked him a vet appointment, and he was to be seen the following day. When packing up Bradley in his pet carrier to go to the vet, we decided Brandon could come along to keep him company. When we were packing Brandon too, we noticed a more-or-less identical neoplasia on his scent gland too - the only difference bein...

Hello again, readers, Today we wanted to talk about Leia's semi-recent diagnosis of Osteoarthritis and/or sciatica type pain and how the diagnosis itself came about. We were in the process of switching up Leia's medication for her CRD - something we've written a previous post about on our blog before. When we were switching Leia from Metacam/Meloxicam (NSAIDS) to Prednisolone (oral steroidal), we noticed Leia's walking seemed to change. It seemed like a rather unusual side effect, why on earth would management for her CRD have an impact on her walking abilities? When Leia showed no change from the Prednisolone, she went back to the vet, and we decided to bring up her walking too so the vet could perform an assessment.  Leia was pivoting and putting less weight through her back-left leg. Given that Leia's walking got worse after swapping from Metacam, the vet believed it was down to the pain-relief aspect of the drug, more than the fact it was a non-steroidal....

Hello again, readers, This will be a fairly lengthy post discussing both Leia's and Shmi recent diagnosis of CRD - Chronic Respiratory Disease. We've been on this journey, with the help of our phenomenal vet, Sarah Bruce, and the input of some exotic specialists, to try and best manage their clinical symptoms of CRD. We had to be realistic, pratical, and patient, throughout all of this in order to get the outcome we desired for both rats. First, we will discuss Shmi and her medical history for CRD. Then, we will discuss Leia and her medical history for CRD. Finally, we will close this post with some additional information about CRD including; diagnostic tests, additional treatment (that we haven't tried), prophylaxes. We will add on some useful links for additional information and sources we've used. Please note; we are not veterinarians, nor do we wish to be thought of as such. Although we will be discussing medical treatments (in very simple terms, may we add...