What to Do If a Bamboo Rat Loses or Breaks Its Teeth? A Detailed Guide to Prevention and Treatment

Symptoms

1. The bamboo rat's consumption of roughage drops severely, and it may even stop eating roughage altogether.

2. When you open the bamboo rat's mouth, you will find that its teeth are broken in half, with many uneven broken edges, or many small white new teeth, or it may simply be missing one or several teeth.

3. The bamboo rat may suddenly lose weight and die without any obvious symptoms, because it cannot eat and is literally starved to death.

Causes of the Disease

1. Lack of minerals in the feed, mainly calcium and phosphorus deficiency. Nowadays many farmers mix their own feed, using cornmeal, wheat bran, peanut meal, soybean meal, growth hormones, vitamins, antibiotics, etc., but they do not add mineral feed. So relying entirely on the minerals contained in these feed ingredients is far from enough to meet the needs of the bamboo rat's bone development, resulting in incomplete tooth calcification and broken teeth.

2. Unscientific addition of antibiotics to the feed. The farmer with the most severe broken teeth problem that I visited had been adding large doses of oxytetracycline to the feed to prevent disease ever since bringing in the breeding stock. But long-term use of tetracycline drugs like oxytetracycline has serious side effects on teeth, causing tooth discoloration, affecting tooth development and formation, causing enamel hypoplasia and poor tooth calcification, making teeth more prone to wear and more susceptible to cavities, and in severe cases leading to broken or lost teeth.

3. It may possibly be caused by some kind of bacteria. According to some farmers, there seems to be a certain degree of contagiousness: among bamboo rats raised with the same feeding method and feed, some farms experienced tooth loss while others did not; and it started with Farm A losing teeth, and because a worker from Farm A went to Farm B, Farm B also developed the problem. This has not yet been verified, and I hope there will be an opportunity to do laboratory testing in the future.

Solutions

1. Use complete feed to meet the bamboo rat's nutritional needs in all respects. Especially for beginner farmers, if you do not have theoretical knowledge, do not mix your own feed; simply use piglet feed or complete chick feed mixed with rice bran for feeding.

2. If farmers mix their own feed, they must add mineral feed. Pig premix can be used, generally added at about 4%.

3. Antibiotics absolutely must not be added to the feed for a long time. The side effects of adding antibiotics include: destroying the bamboo rat's microbial digestive system, making it unable to digest roughage - the reason bamboo rats can eat coarse fiber feed like bamboo is that they digest it with microbes, not with digestive juices; affecting bone calcification, causing osteoporosis; making bamboo rats resistant to drugs, so that when treatment is really needed, the medication is not effective; and unnecessarily increasing feeding costs.

4. Observe the bamboo rats carefully. If you find any with tooth problems, handle it promptly, for example by disinfecting the injured area to prevent bacterial infection of the gums; feed more soft roughage, such as sweet potato and elephant grass stalks, and less hard roughage like bamboo; and supplement more concentrated feed.