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- Modify Rat Behavior
- Earning Trust - Science Incomplete
- Infant and Baby Rats - Affecting Behavior
- Let Rats Decide When
- Bathtub, Carrier, Glove, Shirt, or Pouch: These Are Just Things and Not Techniques
- Let Rats Use Their Teeth
- Help an Unsocialized Rat - Any Rat! - Love a Transport Box
- Litter Box Training Pet Rats
- Use a "Neck Box" with Shy Rats
- Help Your Rat Sit Quietly In Your Arms
- Help Friendly Rats Be More Careful with Their Teeth
- Work Inside the Cage to Help Shy Rats Trust
- Snuggle with Rats
- Pockets Pockets!
- Bond with Rats in "Pouches"
- Bring Rats Into Your Shirt?
- Snug Holding Pet Rats
- Use Touch to Help Shy Rats Tolerate Touch
- Use Touch to Help Shy Rats Tolerate Touch - YouTube
- Help Tame Rats Slow Down Treat-Taking
- Rodentistry
- Please Do Not Use "Forced Socialization"
- Forced Socialization - Jane Adamo's Original Method
- Groom To Bond
- Groom to Bond - from YouTube 1
- Groom to Bond - from YouTube 2
- Groom to Bond - from YouTube 3
- Groom to Bond - from YouTube 4
- Aggression & Management
- Rat Behaviors
- Ratbehavior.org - Essential Behaviors
- Major Rat Body Language - RattyRat
- Establishing the Social Hierarchy: Normal Rat Behaviors
- Normal Play Behavior in Rats
- The Dangers of "No Blood, No Foul"
- Are These Two Rats’ Behaviors “Over the Top”?
- Rats and the Concept of "Alpha"
- Submission, Dominance, Appeasement
- Fear Behaviors of Rats
- Behaviors of "Released" Laboratory Rats
- Tail-Flicking in Pet Rats, YouTube 1 of 2
- Tail-Flicking in Pet Rats - YouTube 2 of 2
- Introduce Rats to Rats
- Enrichment
- Rats Hunt Feathers
- Rats Stash Stuff
- Rats and Evil Bandaids
- Fountains, Rubber, Rocks, and Rats
- Rats Stash from YouTube
- Rats Nom-Nom Coconuts
- One Example of a Rat Play Room
- Jump, Rats, Jump!
- Rats and Pumpkins
- Rats Enjoy Water
- Rats Play
- Enrichment YouTube Videos
- Rats Outside?
- Rats Make Trouble
- Fun Wheel, Stress Wheel, or No Wheel At All
- Rat Health
- Oops? Pregnancy, Birth and Babies
- Start Here: Rat Basics for Pregnancy, Birth, and Babies
- Rat Reproduction - by Debbie Ducommun
- Raising Rat Orphans
- Caring for Rat & Mouse Orphans - AFRMA
- Baby Rat Growth: Birth to Weaning - Rat Guide
- Baby Rat Growth: Baby Rat Development - AFRMA
- Baby Rat Growth: Pictures of the Pinkies - Rattie World O' Comfort
- Sexing Rats: Sexing Baby Rats 101 - AFRMA
- Sexing Rats: Alpha Centauri Stud
- Sexing Rats: Litter Journal - Curiosity Rattery
- Sexing Rats: RatRaisins.com
- Sexing Rats: Is This Rat a Boy or a Girl? - RattyRat
- Healthy Squeaks or Sick Squeaks?
- Bandaging Rats
- How To Do a Post-Op Bandage with Anchor Tapes on a Rat
- Slideshow - Post-Op Bandage with Anchor Tapes on a Rat
- Real Life Example of Anchor Tape Bandage Emergency
- When a Rat Won't Leave a Bandage or Wound Alone
- A Veterinarian Demonstrates Bandaging Rossi
- Good Bandages
- Workable But Mediocre Bandages
- Problem Bandages
- Bathing Rats
- Giving Medications
- When Rats Need to Diet
- Rats Do Hiccup!
- Rats Hiccup - YouTube
- Hind Leg Weakness
- Physical Symptoms of Ill Rats
- Videos of Rat Physical Exams
- Compassionate Euthanasia of Pet Rats
- Trimming Rats' Nails
- Trimming Rats' Teeth
- Rat Anatomy, or, Pretty Pictures
- Multi-Level Cages for Older Rats
- Assorted Rat Cages
- Compassionate Euthanasia
- Oops? Pregnancy, Birth and Babies
- Other Sites
- Rats Are Beautiful & Hilarious
- Friends
- Gwen
- Clicker Adventures
- Family From Fosters
- Three Rats: Maizie, Robin, Rudy
- Introducing baby boys to Gully, Tookie, and Pemy
- Introducing Maizie and Mijah to Gully, Tookie, and Pemy
- Maizie, Mijah, Reunited with Babies Rudy and Robin
- Maizie's Amazing Boy Babies, Rudy and Robin
- Maizie Has Oops Babies
- New: Mijah and Maizie
- Seven Makes Rats
- Willow Joins Me
- Flight Cage Fun (No, Rats Don't Fly)
- Pemy Joins Gulliver and Tookie
- Gulliver and Tookie
- Bitten By Pemy Rat
- Pemy and Dicey
- Mixed Up Lots 'O Rats Fun
- Old Lady Rat Lives with Young Boys
- Tugger, Toby, Timmy
- Adventures In The Rat Room
- Tugger, Toby, Timmy, Almost Grown
- Boy Rats Play Table
- New Boys Tugger, Toby, Timmy
- A Lila Rat Slideshow
- Chancy Rat, Four Years Old!
- Gwen's Pet Rats - The Girls
- Chancy Rat Boggles
- The Big Rat Room
- The Girl's Rat Room - When They Were Young
- Pen and Box Play Space
- The Old Lady Rat Room
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Feeding Medication Foods
After viewing the list of medication foods at the bottom of this gallery, if you want to download a PDF of the list, right click, or click, here.
Click to review a helpful resource from Rat Guide: Giving Medications.
Here are embedded YouTube videos demonstrating techniques to help you help your adult rat take medicine from a syringe or other methods of combining medicine and food.
The goal of creating medicine foods that the rat will eat without a fuss is: "no fighting" with the rat. Rats get very stressed just by being sick to begin with. When we force-feed them yucky medicines, the stress is worsened.
On top of that, the rat stops trusting and becomes apprehensive about the next "fight". This can result in a horrible spiral down effect, making it virtually impossible to feed the rats medicine and ruining your relationship.
These videos demonstrate ways to feed your rat without a fight. It can take many, many tries to hit the right combination, but in the end you'll find a good strategy that works and create a stress-free medicine-feeding experience for you and your rats.
One suggestion from my own experience: start with the lowest value food you can, in the smallest amount possible. Lowest-calorie, lowest-fat foods. Choose banana baby food rather than banana pudding. Simple mashed peas rather than peas in mashed potatoes. Over time, as a rat goes through illnesses, and needs ongoing and different medications, she can tire of the old routine. Slowly, you may have to up the ante, so to speak, intensifying the calories or fat, in order to have the rat eat. If you start out with room-temperature Haagen Daz Chocolate Peanut Butter ice cream, you'll have nowhere to go after that. One example: Vanilla Ensure worked great with one of my rats, until it didn't. Now I add a smidgeon of organic chocolate ice cream sauce, and she gobbles it up.
Be very careful with peanut butter, which rats do choke on. They love it so much they wolf it down too fast. The solution is to thin it somewhat. This video gives great ideas for mixing medicine and foods into bread, to make a type of "medicine ball", for the rat.
This sweet rat is very agreeable about her syringe medicine. It's obviously tasty to her, and her human first bribes her with a treat to hold her attention. Not all medicines are this easy to give. You can teach your rat that syringes are their friends by giving them tasty non-medicine foods by syringe before they ever need real medicine. After they learn that syringes have good things in them, you may have an easier time with giving medicine mixed in with good foods.
You might think you "have to scruff" your rat - but please do not unless all else fails. Spend lots of time mixing yummy foods with the medicine and trying that way. You might even be pleasantly surprised like this human was - here's what he said about Slugo and his meds: "At first Slugo rat had to be scruffed to give him medicine. But after getting scratched up by an older, larger rat, I had to figure out a way to give Slugo rat medicine without hurting his wounds. I was surprised when I simply offered him the syringe and he started lapping up the medicine."
Abilene is a little resistant, but his human has a very quick technique and is careful to squirt the medicine in the back of the mouth and behind the teeth. Short quick squirts, with rest times in between, then Abilene gets a treat at the end.
Here's an example of gently restraining a rat to syringe feed. They are feeding Baytril, which I have no difficulty giving in a simple medication food, when it is compounded in banana flavor. But if you need to restrain the rat, we see here that the two humans get ready, set, and then move calmly but quickly to set the rat in place. Good job minimizing stress.
This is a very well done video. Good tips on understanding what syringe you are using. I'll add a tip: A "1-cc" syringe is the same size as a "1-ml" syringe. Ml and cc reflect U.S. vs. European measurements only.
This video is also showing one human being giving the medicine. While this rat had never been given medicine before, and he did object just a bit, he was basically very good. You may not be so lucky with your rat, in which case other positions will be important, or having a helper human.



Feeding Medication Foods
Read MoreIf you are viewing this in the keywords gallery, click the link below and visit the gallery to view embedded YouTube videos with examples of how to feed pet rats medicine foods. This is the now outdated Food Pyramid from the USDA.
gallery feeding medication foodssyringe feeding ratsmedication foodsfood pyramids