Symptoms come and go and come and go

[RandomTree]

My two foster girls have a weird respiratory issue -- sometimes they're sneezing, making weird noises when they're exercising like they're breathing through a stuffed up nose/head, and have porphyrin on their noses. Other times, they're fine.

It varies from day-to-day, and there doesn't seem to be any pattern to it that I can see.

They've been on Baytril for almost a month, and Doxycycline for two weeks, but they continue to have fluctuating symptoms. I've tried different bedding, and replacing their bedding with a towel, but it didn't help. I've tried watching the pollen count (and my own hay fever symptoms) and comparing it to their flare-ups, but there's no pattern. I've tried benadryl, and that didn't help.

Anybody got any idea what's going on here?!?

[Poppyseed]

Have you tried upping their cage cleanings? That helps a lot sometimes. Also try totally cleaning everything in that room. I also have found a air purifier works wonders for those sneezes.

You might also want to ask the vet about doing a Baytril/zythro combo. That really does kill things better in my experience.

[shadowlily89]

I had a rat like this, she would sometimes be fine and other times her breathing would be very noisy and wheezy. She went on courses of amoxicillin, baytril, baytril and doxy, you name it. Finally we had an x-ray done and it turns out she must have had a very bad respiratory infection at some point that cleared up but left her throat damaged (he explained as if the throat was cut up, causing pieces of skin to cause a raspy noise when air passed over? I can't really explain it like he did lol.). This is what caused the raspy breathing.

She lived a long three years and although she was a noisy little thing it never caused her any problems. Just thought I would throw this out there . Good luck.

[Ratty Krazy]

I had pretty much the exact thing happen with my crew.  I did the Zitho and Zithro/Doxy on the ones that were worse and ALL of them got much better.  Their symptoms are completely gone.  The Zithro is more expensive (I think I paid $50ish for the bottle) but it's sent from heaven