# Do Milkbone Treats Cause Diarrhea?



## Millie & Daisy (Mar 7, 2015)

I recently started giving my girls some milkbone puppy treats because I read that they are safe for rats. They have also been on antibiotics up until yesterday. They have explosive diarrhea. It's bad. Really, really, really bad. Okay, maybe it's more on the looser side than full-out stomach flu diarrhea (I know that rats can't get the stomach flu, just a comparison), but to me any loose stool is diarrhea and they are doing it everywhere. I've been giving the fluids and they've been improving. Yesterday Millie acted awful and I didn't see her drink from the water bottle until 10:30 at night. Though, now they are BOTH drinking normally and I've been giving them lots of love as well as my version of the BRAT diet for rats. 

I've been giving my girls (particularly Millie) off brand pedialyte. Since I bought it over the weekend, I first gave it to them in liquid form and now I let them have it in popsicle form. I've also given them applesauce and a recipe I found for loose stools that contains plain greek yogurt and raw honey. I created my own spin and added applesauce, nutritional yeast, and oats. I also added blueberry to it a couple of times. It worked well enough for a couple of days, but now their poo is even more foul. 

The girls officially hate their oxbow and will not eat it at all, so I made the mistake of giving them more milkbones, thinking that most of the ingredients were comparable at least in theory. I was so so so wrong. It has gotten 10x worse, even though the girls have perked up in terms of energy. Since I have mainly been giving them grains, I decided to make them a protein supplement yesterday with plain scrambled eggs, carrots, broccoli, salmon, and nutritional yeast (I know it seems like I'm going overboard with the yeast, but I actually only started using it yesterday so I don't think that's what's causing it, since it was already going on). I saw some broccoli and carrot in their poop yesterday and today (I also fed them steamed broccoli last night). I swear everything is just going right through them. 


They were dehydrated the other day but are now very much recovered. There is no more of that "tenting" going on with their skin and they are much more friendly and active than they were. I moved them to a "sick cage" downstairs where it's cooler and easier to observe them. The seem fine but their poos are literally greenish/yellowish blobs. They had some milkbone this morning, but I figured out in an instant that the treats were really the only new things I've introduced to them lately, besides some gerber baby wheels, so I decided to take them away in case that's what's causing this. 

Any advice?


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## CosmicKat62 (Nov 24, 2014)

I never had any problems with milkbones, but it definitely sounds like the problem in your case. I'm not sure what you could do except wait and stop giving them milkbones. Just keep their diet normal. If it stay the same or gets worse without any changes though, take them to the vet.


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