# Help please!! mom mutilating babies???



## alida (Dec 14, 2013)

doing my check today I found two of Elsa's babies pretty badly injured like missing the tips of their tails and injured scabbed over parts of skin. Do I take them from mom and hand feed them till weaning? can I put bactrin on the wounds? If I have to hand feed them is puppy milk or cat milk better of can I use human milk? I have a 13 month old and a breast pump (TMI?) so I can use that if it is healthier. I am scared to put them back in with her and wake up and find them more mutilated.


----------



## nanashi7 (Jun 5, 2013)

How old? That's usually over grooming. Neosporin and keep them clean. Put neosporin on mamas hands and nose so she thinks it came from her. 

Is mama stressed? Over grooming days after birth is stress usually. 


Sent from Petguide.com Free App


----------



## Finnebon (Jul 15, 2013)

Poor babies. If you choose to hand feed some, Soy infant formula is the closest to rat's natural milk. I've heard goat's milk works well too. But I would use either of those two before using puppy or kitten. As for human breast milk, I know humans and rats have very similar body chemistry in many ways, and since the infant forumla is close to real human milk and rat's milk.. I wonder if real breast milk would be a good choice? I wouldn't recommend it, but it's very intersting! Might actually be a good match for baby rats too, lol.

You can try letting momma rat out more to run around and give her more breaks away from teh babies might help if she's stressed. I hope the rest of the babies will be ok!


----------



## Adalii (Aug 18, 2012)

The same thing happened with my girl Echos mother. She actually has two scars on her face from her mother. If you are worried enough I do recommend hand raising them. Preferably it would be better to wait until the babies had their eyes open, but you have to do what your gut says.


----------



## alisonia333 (Dec 6, 2013)

I know nothing about rat pups and am not a rat expert, but I work in pediatrics and try to keep up to date on breast milk research. I would recommend not to use human breast milk. The nutritional composition, namely the macronutrient components (fat, protein, carbohydrates) are quite different from rat milk. Rat grow at a much faster rate than human infants and require much more protein. I did a quick search on rat milk and it looks like it's about 20% protein. Human milk is way less. You could do an analysis of micronutrients as well, but I bet they're also quite different

Here's human milk composition from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/392766
Semin Perinatol. 1979 Jul;3(3):225-39. The composition of human milk. Jenness R.


"Mature human milk contains 3%--5% fat, 0.8%--0.9% protein, 6.9%--7.2% carbohydrate calculated as lactose, and 0.2% mineral constituents expressed as ash. Its energy content is 60--75 kcal/100 ml"

Here's info on artificial rearing of rats from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2758007Br J Nutr. 1989 May;61(3):495-518. Milk-substitutes comparable to rat's milk; their preparation, composition and impact on development and metabolism in the artificially reared rat. Auestad N, Korsak RA, Bergstrom JD, Edmond J.

It's so sweet of you to volunteer your milk to nurse the little pups, though!


----------



## alisonia333 (Dec 6, 2013)

EDIT: This site says rat milk is 10% protein (http://www.shunamiterats.co.uk/principlesdiet.shtml) while the other sites I saw said 20%. So I'm not totally sure what the nutrient breakdown is (the article I linked to has measurements of nutrients, but not proportions to the whole) for rat's milk. It is definitely more than human milk though, according to various studies I read comparing different milks and milk substitutes


----------

