Goosemoose Pet Portal

Hello everyone,
I have a question about my dumbo rat Ivy. She's an intact 2 1/2 year old female. For a couple of months, she's had a large bubble-like mass in her groin area made out of mammary tissue. The vet is always able to aspirate it and gets out A LOT of milk (like a teaspoon). Then the lump is not as tight. The vet thought she would just have to aspirate it every few weeks to make sure Ivy wasn't uncomfortable. She thinks it could be a pituitary problem or could be cured by having her spayed, but feels Ivy's too old for that surgery.

Aspirating the lump still causes there to be less fluid in there. But in about a day, it gets more firm again. It doesn't take long till it gets very firm. The abnormal mammary tissue definitely grew, so a lot of it is a tumor. Last week it felt like a balloon; like there's just air inside. Now it's more firm and seems bigger than her head. When she walks, it touches the ground and she has to drag it. Our vet says she will remove her lump, but she may just get another one filled with milk, which happened before. Has anyone had this kind of milk production problem with their rat?

Ivy's had a mass removal near her lower leg in April that had some weird colored milk in it when she aspirated it. We had a biopsy and it wasn't cancer. A day after the surgery, she had this little lump in her groin. And now it's become this large one that fills with milk. Poor Ivy.  :( Also since that surgery, two other masses appeared. One is on a lot of her upper side. The tumor is more of a flap of skin than a round one. Just two weeks ago we found a hard small lump near her chin/armpit area. It's growing fast. We have an appointment to remove the 3 of them Fri, but the vet is trying to see if there's any medication Ivy can take to prevent milk production. I don't know if she should be on medication before removing anymore lumps.

Other info about Ivy is that she is overweight. We are not giving her as many treats now to try to help with that. She's had hindleg degeneration for a few months and is getting worse. Her front limbs seem fine. She uses one hand to hold food, but is probably to hold herself up. She can still walk around by hobbling and seems to walk on her heals. Ivy is still active and happy most of the time. She's on Metacam and Glucosamine. She's also had respiratory infections where she makes the wheezing sound and she was on medication for a long time. The vet thinks it's more upper respiratory, and Ivy seems better now.

For her tumor with milk, I'm wondering if it's just the tumor that's causing the milk, so the large milk production isn't the problem? It's just that the vet's never seen a rat with one mammary gland producing so much milk before. On another rat forum someone who wrote a research paper on PTs said it's a prolactin-secreting pituitary tumor. The vet didn't think so because no other mammary glands are producing milk. She couldn't get any out of the other mass on Ivy's side. I'm wondering if there's any medicine that would reduce the milk production, and do you think it would help? Also if this is not cancer, would there be anything she could take to prevent all her tumors? I'm sure more will be growing.

Thank you for reading this and any help you can provide.
Lauren   :)

We've had a couple of rats with mammary tumours with milk as well. But we get all our rats spayed so the tumours do not come back.
Avoid any fat, it promotes tumour growth, as does sugar.
If your sweetie had a pituitary tumour, you would see other signs like knuckling, confusion, unable to grasp food. Also, the rear end degeneration can  be a sign of pt.

Thanks for the help. :)

Ivy had surgery Friday. The vet took out of the large one near her groin. Before the surgery she aspirated it and it had a lot of milk. Then almost immediately, it filled up with milk again!? It was near her urethra, but she said she got it all out. We were just worried about her going to the bathroom. It took a full day until she pooped! The vet also got the smaller lump near her chin, but after that Ivy was starting to get too cold and she had to stop. She was under over an hour. So she still has the large mass on her side. I'm pretty sure that this will be it for surgery because I want Ivy to have a happy life, not continually getting her lumps removed. Unless we can wait a few months because I feel bad for her.

Ivy is doing good and seems her old self now. She has staples holding the incision together and her sister is making her feel better.

The vet was asking other exotic vets she knew about the medication to prevent tumors. She's just worried because of the side effects if they mainly help only cancerous tumors. But she told me she was asking vets who specialize in birds and reptiles so they didn't know.  :(  Her boss, another vet there, does know about rats, so she said she'll be talking about Lupron and Tamoxifen with her (the ones I found could help). But it's taking quite a while! Ivy's next appointment is in 2 weeks, so maybe I'll call her.

~Lauren

Tamoxifen is the only drug I know of to help mammory tumors. It interupts the estrogen and therefor can stop growth or slow the growth of the tumor. I have never used it (never had female rats) but I know other people on this forum probably have.

Good luck, hope Ivy is recovering well!