~ September Skies ~  

"Just a Spoonful of Sugar"

or: How to get medicines into a wriggly rat!

Having had very few sick rats, I have not had to consider this before, but now Jesse is suffering from a respiratory infection I have had to learn how... Here are my solutions, and some other ideas from members of the AusRats list. I hope they help you.

I have struggled to get medicines directly into a rat's mouth with a syringe, and I never want to try and do it again! So I thought about advice I've heard over the years to get the medicines in there, and I decided to go with the food trick :-)

Here is a list of the foods which I have used with great success, even with the sickest rat:

Cream cheese - be cautious with this, as it is a dairy product, and some medicines are inhibited by dairy products. Also, just use a tiny amount, because a sick rat will sometimes only eat a mouthful, and if you have mixed his medicine in with it he must eat it all.

Nutella -  a chocolate/hazelnut spread. Very popular with all the family! I mix my medicine directly with the nutella, and this makes it more runny because I have liquid medicine. If you have powered medicine, you should add some water to make it a little more runny, as rats shouldn't eat very sticky foods in case they gag. 

Canned beans - I open up a bean, squirt his drop of medicine in, mash the insides slightly to mix it in, and give it to the ratty. I think this trick works better with fairly tasty canned beans (ie; they used salt and sugar).

Mashed peas - I squeeze the insides out of a few peas, onto a teaspoon. Then mash them up with a knife int he teaspoon, and add the medicine. Goes down a treat :-)

Here are some suggestions other people have given:

Gravy - Some medicines taste very strongly, and rats can tell when they are in most foods. Apparently the best thing to use with  very bad tasting medicines is salty food, as it tends to mask yucky flavours that sweet foods can't mask. A tiny bit of gravy seems to be very popular with the ratties.

Honey - mixed with the medicine on a spoon, much like nutella.

Peanut butter - mix with a little water to make it less sticky, and then add the medicine.

Coby, from AusRats, explains how she mixes her medicine and nutella.

"With the discussions we often have on medications, I thought I'd share some
tips and ideas of how we go about mixing it for our lot.  Goodness knows TSO
could start moonlighting as a chemist, he's so good at it now.

First piece of equipment which comes in handy is some stainless steel egg
cups.  We just got them from the supermarket, they are a handy size and
depth for mixing the small quantity of meds usually required.  To grind
tablets to a powder, we actually use the 'wrong' end of a stone pestle,
which fits neatly into the egg cup.  Failing this the back of a teaspoon
would work.  This ensures the tablet's as fine as can be - that can make a
huge difference to your rat taking their meds.  Mix in a teeny amount of
Nutella (better to use to little where you can add to it, but we've learnt
if you use too much, you may have leftovers), and even less water.  I'm
talking perhaps a quarter of a teaspoon of spread, and eighth of teaspoon
water.  Mix to runnyish paste - too claggy and ratties will revolt.  Serve
immediately.  Sometimes this must be done from a finger (though with
Tamoxifen you can't touch the stuff), but most ratties will take their meds
from a spoon this way.

Check with your vet if you have more than one medication to dose, some you
can mix together, others should definitely be dosed on their own."

And an idea for how to actually measure and mix a correct dosage, from Suzi, of the AusRats list.

Try medicine balls: half nutella and half light spreadable cream cheese.  
Mix with soy milk powder.  remove a blob big enough for the dosage period 
(eg 1xday for 10 days you need a blob big enough to make 10 little balls).  
Add the baytril and mix well.  Divide into doses.  Use the remaining mixture 
as placebo balls to ensure your other rats don't feel left out.

                                    Created on the 13th Feb 2004.      Last updated 10/4/05.