Quarantine
by Carrie Noring

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the definition of the word quarantine is "enforced isolation or restriction of free movement imposed to prevent the spread of contagious disease." With Michigan being a hotbed for contagious rat diseases, it is very important to follow proper quarantine procedures. As the old adage goes "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." It is always better to prevent your rats from catching something, rather than trying to battle an illness that may leave permanent damage or even death in its wake.

Before getting into the actual quarantine procedures, let's discuss safe practices for when you visit somebody else's rats. Many diseases can be spread by respiratory aerosol, meaning the disease causing agent can be floating around in the air near infected rats. These airborne particles can adhere to your skin, hair, and clothing. So, some precautions need to be followed in order to reduce the potential of infecting your resident rats after visiting anywhere that has rats and/or small animals. This means pet stores that carry animals, a friend's rattery, a stranger's rattery, or even a friend's house in which there are only a couple of pet rats. REMEMBER - APPEARANCES CAN BE DECEIVING - JUST BECAUSE A RAT APPEARS HEALTHY DOESN'T MEAN IT IS. The absolutely best thing to do is wait a minimum of three hours before returning home. This wait gives enough time for the disease organisms to die before finding another host. Also, when you get home, change your clothes immediately - put them directly into the wash. It is even a good idea to take a shower, but in lieu of a shower, make sure to thoroughly wash your hands, arms, and face. When at pet stores, I make it a rule to never handle the animals, it helps cut down on the diseases spread by contact. I even carry a little bottle of Purell hand sanitizer with me and use that after being in a pet store. Paranoid, who me? When it comes to my rats' health, you better believe it.

Now then, when should you quarantine, you might wonder? Whenever you bring a new rat home, even if it appears healthy and is from a reliable breeder, you need to quarantine it. If your rats become sick, you need to quarantine them from everyone else's rats. And, if your rat goes anywhere near other people's rats, such as a rat show or for a combined rattery breeding, you need to quarantine you rat before it goes out and when in comes back.

Okay, you may be wondering why you have to quarantine a rat that seems perfectly fine. Well, rats are like people in that they can be a carrier of a disease and not actually show any symptoms of having it. If you introduce such a rat to your resident rats, it is more than likely that your residents will become sick. Another reason is that some ratteries keep a closed door policy. This means they don't let any rats from outside sources enter their ratteries, and sometimes they don't even let other rat owners into their rattery. By doing this over long periods of time, their rats can lose immunity to diseases that most rats have no trouble fighting off. A real life example of this happened to a friend of mine. She adopted two lovely rats from a rattery with a closed door policy. The rats seemed perfectly healthy, but during quarantine ended up going through a bout of minor respiratory illness, which turned into pneumonia very quickly and took quite intensive medication and veterinary treatment to cure. Now the initial respiratory infection could probably have been easily fought off by my friend's resident rats, but the pneumonia is a different story altogether. If proper quarantine had not been followed, it is very possible the entire rattery would have caught the pneumonia rather than just the two new rats being brought in.

Quarantine means no rats can come into the rattery and no rats can leave the rattery. New litters are considered new rats, so breeding must stop during quarantine. If you have a litter of babies when your rats become sick, quarantine cannot begin until the young rats are completely weaned from the mother (at about five weeks old). If you continue to breed, the disease will continue to have new host rats to infect. Do not purchase, adopt, or rescue any rats while under quarantine. Do not sell, adopt out, or place any rats while under quarantine.  No rats in, no rats out. Period.

Quarantining a new rat in order to eventually introduce it to your resident rats is fairly simple. This is also the same procedure used for your rat going out or coming in from visiting with someone else's rat. If the rat seems perfectly healthy and is showing no symptoms of illness, then quarantine can begin immediately. If, however, the rat is ill, then quarantine cannot start until the rat has been treated for the illness and is no longer showing any symptoms.

The best possible scenario is to keep the new rat at a friend's or relative's house (as long as they don't have pet rats of their own). The proper length of time for this is a minimum of 22 days. Remember to follow the above precautions regarding visiting rats when you go over to spend time with your new rat. However, not all of us have friends or relatives that are willing to temporarily house a rat. If this is your situation, you can quarantine in your own home. Keep the rat being quarantined in a separate room as far away as possible from your resident rats. A room on the other side of the house or a room on another floor is best. Keep the door to the quarantine room shut and only go into the room when necessary. If possible, close off the return air flow vents to keep the air in the quarantine room separate from the rest of the house. It is a good idea to visit your quarantined rat at the end of the day, allowing you to take care of and play with your resident rats beforehand. Then, when you return home, or for those quarantining in their own homes, finish with visiting and caring for the rat on the other end of the house, avoid all contact with your resident rats. And once again, change clothes and wash up. This is just an extra step to make sure you keep your rats safe.

When you rat becomes ill, as stated above, treatment must be completed and all symptoms of illness must be gone before starting quarantine. Also, all young must be weaned before quarantine can start. Here are some recommended quarantine lengths for various diseases:

• SDA - three months
• Sendai - three months
• KRV - six months
• Ectoparasites (lice, mites, fleas, ticks) - four weeks *this is the one exception where quarantine is started the same time as treatment*
• CAR - unfortunately this disease cannot be quarantined away. All breeding must stop and the colony must must remain in quarantine until it dies out.

With SDA, Sendai, and KRV, you should have a blood serum test which measures antibodies in blood serum. Blood serum is the fluid portion of blood. The actual blood cells are carried in the serum. Antibodies are created by the infected rat’s immune system. They are created for the purpose of finding and eradicating the current viral infection and to protect the rat from being infected by that particular strain of virus in the future. A veterinarian must draw blood from the rat in question while it is under anesthesia. Then the blood serum must be extracted from the whole blood. After properly preparing the sample, the veterinarian will send it to a laboratory that performs the test and interprets the results. If the rat in question is already deceased, testing can be requested as part of the post mortem examination.