It’s great to see the popularity of keeping a pet rat increasing as public opinion on rats changes due to the great work some rat owners are doing on social media showing just how cute, playful, and loving rats can actually be.
Although rats are generally low maintenance pets, they can have various problems with allergies and after publishing our article going over using benadryl for guinea pigs, we noticed a number of people asking if you can use benadryl for rats due to worrying about benadryl killing their pet rat.
After noticing just how many people are reaching out about using benadryl with their pet rat, we decided to publish this article to try and help as many of our readers as possible.
In our opinion though, you should never give your pet rat any medication without a veterinarian telling you to due to dosing medication being difficult for rats!
Is Benadryl Safe For Rats?
Benadryl is technically safe for rats when used at the correct dosage but the issue is, it is very difficult to correctly dose benadryl for a rat to prevent the animal from having any potential side effects from the medication.
There are a number of posts from rat owners on social media reporting that they have used benadryl with their own pet rat but the worrying part is many of them use very different doses of the medication.
Our regular readers will already know how that we are not fans of people offering advice on medication for pets on social media as many people see it and unfortunately, some of them follow it.
What Do People Use Benadryl For In Their Rats?
The theory is that benadryl may be able to help treat various problems that some rats have with allergies but the reports that we see from people who have used benadryl with their pet rat are mixed.
Some people say that benadryl helped their pet rat where as others say that it did little to nothing.
This is just another reason why we would not recommend that you try to give your pet rat benadryl unless your vet recommends it as there is no way to know if it will even help your pet rat.
This is due to benadryl being designed to treat allergies in humans and the fact that even in humans, it only works with a small number of all possible allergies.
Due to that, it may never work with the particular problem that your rat is having and a specific medication from your local veterinarian may be required anyway.
Will Benadryl Kill A Rat?
Due to it being difficult to correctly dose benadryl for a pet rat, there is a chance that it will be able to kill your pet rat if you give your rat benadryl.
Although we have seen a large number of reports of people who have used benadryl with their rat without their pet rat dying, we would never recommend that any of our readers takes the risk as its just not worth it.
Alternatives To Benadryl For Rats!
In our opinion, the best alternative to using benadryl for your pet rat is to try and work out what the actual irritant is causing the reaction and remove it.
You may be surprised to realize that scented candles are a major irritant for pet rodents and simply taking the scented candle out of the room that your rat is in may be enough to prevent the issue without needing any medication at all.
A dusty bedding is another very common mistake that we see people who keep pet rats make and more often than not, simply switching over to a dust free bedding can prevent the rat from having problems.
If your pet rat is having some serious problems with various allergies then we would recommend that you take your pet rat to see a veterinarian and get a specific medication that has been specifically designed for use in rats.
Not only will this make it much safer to give your pet rat the medication but the medications that are specifically designed for use with pet rodents are often much easier to get your pet rodent to actually take the medication.
