Rattatats is back!

We're back in business! Thanks to everyone for all their patience as we dealt with moving. We're finally settled in and ready to sell our rat food again. If you would like to purchase some rat food, click here. I'm going to try and update the site as much as I can with new content, updated pictures, new pictures, and less words! I'm also going to try to put up some tables on the specific nutritional content of our rat food.

There's also a survey that only takes a couple minutes to complete. Every completed survey is a HUGE help in improving our rat food and the web site.

Feel free to browse the site, and look for updates in the near future.

Rattatats sales put on hold

Yesterday was the last day to place an order for Rattatats until around the end of January or beginning of February. Of course, we do hope to have the food for sale again as soon as possible, but it is difficult since we are in the process of moving. Moving around Christmas doesn't make it any easier, either! We don't even have a permanent place to live yet, which is why we're waiting until we're settled before starting this all up again.

We're looking forward to some modifications of the site and maybe even a couple ingredient improvements! We'll definitely let you know all about it if you're a current customer. If you're not a current customer and would like to be notified when we're back in business, please click here.

Two things..

First off, we have recently discovered moths in our food (undoubtedly due to the sunflower seeds, which are the only ingredients purchased at a pet store, and the heat) and a couple customers have found this same problem in bags that they have received. If you are one of these people, please e-mail us so that we can fix this problem for you.

If you currently have moths in your food, you can still feed your rats with it! Stick the bag in the freezer for 24 hours, or overnight, and the moths will be killed. Then you can feed it to your rats without having to worry about moths flying about. Plus, your rats will enjoy the dead moths in the food! Gross, but true.

We are so very sorry that this has happened and are doing everything we can to ensure that it never happens again.


Secondly, for the past few weeks, possibly longer, when clicking on the paypal "buy now" button to purchase some food, it has linked to my personal paypal account. This is totally bizarre and I have no idea how this happened. However, the problem has been fixed. I'm only bringing this up due to the possibility that some of you out there may have been dissuaded from puchasing a bag of food since it seemed that the payment was going to an unknown source. If you did notice this, please know that we fixed the error and now everything is running smoothly!

Thank you!

Babies!

We just got back from a quick one-night trip to Las Vegas, and guess what I discovered...babies!! 15 healthy, beautiful pinkies. I think that they were born this morning. Three of them are pink-eyed while the rest are black-eyed with dark markings. After sexing them all, I've determined that there are 9 males and 6 females. Out of the three pink-eyed, two are male and one is female.

Anjie's being a wonderful mommy; she was nursing them all when I first checked on her and actually seemed very glad to see me. Moms usually seem to care all about their babies and nothing else. Anjie didn't even care when I stuck my hand in and started messing with them all!

I'll post pictures soon. If you want to reserve any babies, now is the time! These babies are all going to Ratterfly Rattery, so please contact the rattery with any questions.

Close call

Yesterday I decided to bring one of my girls to work with me (I work at an emergency vet hospital that typically only sees dogs and cats with the very occasional exotics). Ashton is two years old and my absolute favorite baby. A few hours in, I went on my ten minute break and brought Ashton back with me. I had a slice of pizza and gave her a piece of crust. I was on the phone at the time and didn't watch her eat it. After a few minutes, I looked down at her cuz I felt her wheezing, which she has never ever done. Then she started to push her head back and her ears went down...almost like she was trying to regurgitate (at the time, I thought that rats cannot regurgitate. I found out later that rats can regurgitate but are not able to vomit).

I immediately went back to the treatment room, grabbed a vet I knew to know the most about rats (which, sadly, isn't saying much), and told her that my rat was choking. Of course, the vet said, "She looks fine to me!" Um, no. She was choking. Sorry, doctor, that it looks different than dogs, but this is a rat choking (although I personally had never seen a rat choke, but come on, I knew what was going on).

So once she really started displaying signs of choking, they immediately started suction on her and put her on oxygen. Ok, literally, she almost died. They had to bring the crash cart over and everything. I can't even tell you how freaked out I was; sobbing, shaking, the whole bit. After a few minutes of suction and all that good stuff, they finally got everything they could out and we put her in an oxygen tank. She was still breathing pretty hard, but at least it wasn't open-mouthed breathing anymore.

A couple hours later, we nebulized her (if you don't know, basically putting evaporated saline into her box for about five minutes). She did ten times better after that. Then we did x-rays, which confirmed that she aspirated into her lungs. So basically my little girl gave herself respiratory. Ugh. She's always been in such perfect health and she has to go and do something stupid like this.

It's a good thing I work at a vet hospital and it happened while I was at work.

So, in the end, Ashton is doing better but is still not 100%. I have to keep her separated from the other girls in a super clean cage, meaning I have to clean it every time she makes waste to avoid any ammonia buildup which could apparently send her over the edge. They also gave me zithromax to give her orally twice daily, plus I need to nebulize her myself a few times a day. I'm going to buy a humidifier, but for today I'm carefully using the steam from a tea kettle.

I also just found her sneezing out some brownish blood, so I know it's not just mucousy sneezing. It's got to be from her lungs.

My poor girl. :(


So the moral of the story is.... DON'T FEED YOUR RATS PIZZA CRUSTS!!!

Anjie's pregnant!

My little black self dumbo, Anjie, is pregnant with Caleb's babies! I'm loaning her out to Ratterfly Rattery. Check out Ratterfly for adorable rat pics and past, current, and upcoming litters. We think that Anjie got pregnant around Sunday, March 5th, so her tentative due date is March 26th.

Anjie's the one pictured on the Our Food page, sitting on top of a bag of Rattatats. She's much chubbier at the moment!


In Rat Nutrition news, I added a page today concerning the optimal nutrition for every life stage, from newborns to pregnant does to the geriatric rat, and even different nutrition requirements for males versus females! Check it out. More pics will be added once Anjie gives me some cute babies to take pictures of!

If you have any rattie-type questions, e-mail us at ratfood@ratnutrition.com!

Thanks for stopping by. :)

We're just getting started

RatNutrition.com is complete! It will always and forever be a work in progress, as all good web sites should be. Our blog is the newest addition. So what's on this site? Lots of info about how to keep your rats and mice healthy, and we provide the simplest way to do just that: Rattatats! Visit the links to the right to learn all about the rat/mouse food that we offer.

So what's this blog for? Here we'll update with news about anything rats, particularly concerning rat nutrition, of course.

Check back soon to learn more about how to best care for your little ratties!