Julie Stauffer

<<How did you come by a newborn?>>

I hesitate to tell you as you seem to actually like the things. We have had
a big rat out in our barn, eating our feed, and to be honest we have been
planning her demise. Then apparently, the dogs found her nest and had the
babies. Only this one was still alive when my 11yo found them. So she
brought it to me.

We fed it dropperfuls of warm goat milk for several days and it seemed to be
doing pretty well until yesterday. I got up when I heard the little kids
(3yos) in the kitchen. They were "checking" on the baby rat but may have
injured him. Anyway, just about the time I decided he wasn't so gross, he
died.

Julie

[email protected]

In a message dated 10/24/02 12:32:22 PM Central Daylight Time,
[email protected] writes:

<< We fed it dropperfuls of warm goat milk for several days and it seemed to
be
doing pretty well until yesterday. >>

That was probably why it died.
Goats milk closely resemble human milk, which is comparitively low in protein.
Rat babies grow very quickly, and rodent milk is overall very high in
protein. Human milk is something like five percent, and rodent is over 30
percent if I remember right.
So it was getting hydration from the goats milk, but it probably starved to
death.
Wild rats do not make good pets, contact a breeder as Kelly suggested if you
want to keep one!!

Ren

[email protected]

<<<<How did you come by a newborn?>>

I hesitate to tell you as you seem to actually like the things. We have
had
a big rat out in our barn, eating our feed, and to be honest we have been
planning her demise. Then apparently, the dogs found her nest and had
the
babies. Only this one was still alive when my 11yo found them. So she
brought it to me.

We fed it dropperfuls of warm goat milk for several days and it seemed to
be
doing pretty well until yesterday. I got up when I heard the little kids
(3yos) in the kitchen. They were "checking" on the baby rat but may have
injured him. Anyway, just about the time I decided he wasn't so gross,
he
died.

Julie>>

Awwww. At least you had mercy on the little thing. I tried to rescue a
wild baby rat once and it died as well, they are hard to raise away from
the mom.

I love rats but wild rats don't make good pets, although I'm sure there
are exceptions to that rule out there.

Kris

________________________________________________________________
Sign Up for Juno Platinum Internet Access Today
Only $9.95 per month!
Visit www.juno.com