
Come home to find one of my girls laying flat as a pancake at the bottom of her cage. She has been absolutely fine right up until now. She's displaying signs of a resp infection, but with one symptom I've never seen before - pulling her head back and straining her eyes as though about to cough up phlegm. I've also never seen a rat go down this quickly with resp infection before! Usually builds up from a small rattle in our experience.
I've contacted 2 emergency vets in our city, the only 2 that I know of and both are a bit useless. The fee would be in excess of £100. One of which we've been to before and they didn't have a clue about rats. The other one, I just described her symptoms over the phone a minute ago and they said they would 'most likely put her down' - what?!! She doesn't need to be put down!
What do I do? We have baytril and metacam supplies here that we've tried to get her to eat mixed with nutrical on a bit of bread? Is it adivesable to persist with this then take her to our regular vets tomorrow? Or does this sound like something more serious?