Home » Plants & Animals » Rats and Rodents » Rat Health Update: SDA Virus

Rat Health Update: SDA Virus

© Karen Yang

I was originally going to do a new April Fool's article this week, but after the last month or so I'm too depressed to manage. If you want a humorous article this year, you'll have to make do with last year's article. On to the sad stuff....

Back at the beginning of February, we took in 2 young rescue rats, one male and one female. They originally came from a snake-food breeder 's stock , but his wife took pity on the babies and was trying to find homes for them. They seemed in wonderful health and were quarantined at another home for 1 week. We quarantined them for one additional week, and since they seemed so healthy and so scared and lonely, I decided not to wait and began to introduce them to our rats at that point. Can you see the fatal mistake here?

At any rate, introductions didn't work out quite as I'd planned. The boy, Fritz, was supposed to move in with Coconut, our single boy, but Coco liked him way too much, and Fritz didn't appreciate that at all! He got along okay with the other boys, but I was a bit nervous about leaving such a little guy alone with all three big boys. The girl, Ferrari, did a bit better. She was accepted by Snoogie, Ginger and Cherry (yes, amazingly she's still around - we've decided she can't possibly have a pituitary tumor, but must have something more like MS), but Crème and Softie decided Ferrari was the worst thing they'd ever seen and kept trying to beat her up. It was probably for the best that the introductions didn't work out, because, as you'll see, we might have lost more rats.

One week after the failed introduction attempt, Ginger was ill with what seemed like an abscess in her neck (denial, denial, denial....) and an acute myco flare-up, and Cherry was having trouble breathing. Ginger died within a few days, and Cherry grew gradually worse. By then, Snoogie and Gregle were ill - both of them had inflamed, itchy, dull-looking eyes, and there was no more denying what we were up against. It was the disease with three initials that causes most rat owners to shudder with horror - SDA or Sialodacryoadentitis virus, a.k.a. rat Coronavirus or RCV. Here's all you'll ever need to know about SDA, and more: http://www.rmca.org/Articles/sda.htm

Our colony had never been exposed to this virus before, so it was particularly tragic. The two new rats obviously had come in contact with it before, possibly even getting immunity to it from their mom, since they showed no symptoms whatsoever, and they remain healthy. We lost 4 out of our 5 rats that developed symptoms - miraculously, tough little Cherry survived! Ginger, Snoogie and then Crème died within about 3-4 days of becoming ill, but poor Gregle fought for nearly a month. He appeared to be getting better last weekend, but then relapsed and died 3 days later. At the beginning of February, we had 11 rats -- now we have 7.

The copyright of the article Rat Health Update: SDA Virus in Rats and Rodents is owned by Karen Yang. Permission to republish Rat Health Update: SDA Virus in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.