Country Vet
The mystery of the missing rat bait
The problem
One evening, Pita and Eva's owner noticed an overturned rat bait station lying on the lawn. The lid was open, and the bait was gone.
He found Pita loitering by the front door and assumed he was to blame.
But he was so concerned, he searched the property and found Eva tearing open another bait station and others lying empty.
The two pigs had been on a rampage once they discovered the stations contained bait, eating a significant amount between them.
Rat bait is designed to be delectable, so accidental toxicity in pigs isn't uncommon. Pigs generally have a high tolerance for it, unless they eat a significant amount of a concentrated product, as Pita and Eva had done.
The investigation
Rodenticides contain anticoagulants, which interfere with the body's vitamin K production, crucial for the clotting of blood. When blood can't clot quickly enough, it bleeds into the body, showing up as bruises, spots, and streaks just under the skin. It gets into the lungs, abdomen, gut, and the rest of the body.
There are several different types of anticoagulants used in rat baits. In this case, it was a drug called brodifacoum, which is particularly long-acting, taking 4-6 weeks to leave an animal's system if it doesn't eat a fatal dose (or gets treatment).
The treatment
The good news was we had time to formulate a plan as it takes 3-5 days for clinical signs of poisoning to show. Our options were:
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do a blood test to check for appropriate clotting in three days; or,
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start treatment with vitamin K immediately.
Brodifacoum lingers in the body. Once treatment starts, you need to do regular blood tests to check clotting time to measure whether it's improving.
If Pita or Eva had been found unwell and haemorrhaging, our options would have been:
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immediate hospitalisation;
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injectable vitamin K;
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supportive care.
But because their owner had found them straight away, we immediately started them on an oral vitamin K supplement. They would need to receive a daily dose (wrapped in bread) every day for at least two weeks.
The next day, Pita managed to break into
Rat baits are dyed a bright colour which shows up in faeces
the neighbour's paddock and ate MORE rat bait, dragging it down from its hiding spot in a tree.
Three days after eating the bait, Pita became dull and lethargic. He moved slowly and wasn't eating with his usual gusto. Thankfully, he still had enough of an appetite to eat his vitamin K sandwiches.
A chronic cough he'd had for some time before he ate the rat bait began to worsen. There was no sign of bleeding in the mouth, under the skin, or in his gastrointestinal tract at a follow-up visit, but Pita had a fever. His crackly lungs, cough, and fever indicated pneumonia, so he received antibiotics, antiinflammatory pain relief, and dedicated nursing from his owner.
Three days after the last dose of vitamin K, I did more blood tests. Eva was fine, but Pita's blood was still taking too long to clot. There are always differences between breeds of pig and individuals. While there is a lot of research into the average clotting values for the similar-sized potbelly pig (a common pet in in the US), there's barely any on kunekune.
To be safe, we continued with the vitamin K treatment for a further week.
The result
Pita's final blood test clotted very quickly – so quickly, it was hard to run the test.
He and Eva recovered fully and continue to cause mischief. There's also no rat bait within their reach.