Sunday 27 April 2008

Sunday: Rodent Day

Nyoka has decided she would like to digest half - and only half - of her meal. The rest she threw back up. I think I'm going to have to go to feeding her very small meals more frequently - once she's had a chance to recover from having regurgitated. That means we'll have to skip feeding her for ten days or so - and her next feed will be dusted with Avipro vitamin and probiotic powder.

We also cleaned out the rodent cages - a fairly major production seeing as we have fourteen adult female and six adult male rats and ten babies, plus an uncountable number of Multimammates. Unfortunately cleanout day is also usually byebye day; we do cull out males and surplus females of both species for the moment because we don't need all of them for breeding. The culled ones are euthanised, then fed to our snakes.

I also discovered that rats who are being bathed because they've gotten themselves filthy in the food you've given them as a treat shriek like you're killing them. The amount of leaping about, squealing and looking at me pitifully you'd have thought I was bathing them in sulphuric acid, not lukewarm water with baby shampoo.

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