About Water Soluble Doxy

Water-soluble doxy is just a great thing to have on hand. If your rat is starting to get sick, but he's not so bad off that his behaviors and desire have totally changed, this is the stuff for you. If you follow the prescribed dosage for pigeons on the packet, you're using the low-end dosage recommended for treating mild respiratory infections in rats. And if you treat it while the infection is still mild, you can generally prevent it from getting worse (decreasing the amount of potential great irreversable damage to your rat's lungs) and thus, you can save yourself a lot of money in vet bills.

The water soluble doxy is the one in the pouch.

Anyway, here's what you need to do:

Head over to Jedd's Pigeon Supply for water-soluble doxycycline:

www.jedds.com/ProductDetail.asp?MainCategoryID=33&ProductID=971

The nice thing about that particular variety is that it comes in small pouches: Once opened it doesn't last very long (other varieties come in large pouches so you end up throwing a lot away) but the separate pouches will allow you to keep it until it expires (usually 2-3 years later).

It is a little packet of water-soluble doxycycline - really good for basic mini-infections (obviously gasping and wheezing will need a full regulated dose administered by a veterinarian) and has always served our purpose well.

Anyway, grab the 8-pack (this should cover your rats for their lifetime), buy a gallon of distilled water (the distilled part is very important: Doxy tends to bind to everything and you want it binding to the rat, not the water), and follow the directions on the packet (bird doses tend to be the low-end of recommended rat doses which is great for treating mild infections).

Since, for this variety, it's 1 packet to 2 liters water, you'll need another 2 liter container (that you can close up) to mix the packet and water (Gallon = 3.8 liters ). Once mixed, refrigerate the gallon.

Give the rat(s) that for his/their sole source of water for 10 days swapping out the water (for fresh) nightly (very important also: It tends to make little sculptures when stagnant). Shake the container before serving.

And again (sorry to be redundant here) the water-soluble doxy can be used to treat mild infections. If your rat is gasping, not eating, not drinking, puffed up, has an oily coat, isn't maintaining his body temperature, is breathing really loud, is breathing through his stomach (his sides are fluttering), has an excess of dried-out, globbed-on porhyrin (red) staining on his nose, ears, and/or paws, THIS WON'T HELP YOUR RAT so take Templeton to the vet and request that he be put on the high-end dosages of one of the suggested antibiotics here.

If your rat is just sneezing and you hear and see nothing else, try giving him Children's Liquid Benadryl (1 to 2 mg/kg or 0.45 to 0.9 mg/lb) orally every 6-8 hours first and see if that works. No need to develop an immune-resistance to any antibiotic unnecessarily!

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Disclaimer: There are many non-sarcastic accounts and tips on the web regarding rat care. This is not one of them. These are merely accounts of our experiences with rats, our perceptions of these experiences, where we've failed and where we've succeeded. These accounts are here for two purposes:

1) To entertain.

2) To help avoid repetition of mistakes

Remember! Your rat is not a science project, he is your friend!

All content contained herein © 1996-2007 by Andrew Waltz, Nathalie Baldwin, & the rats of RatRaisins, Inc.
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