10 replies to this topic

[Maureen Thomas]

I keep a cardfile on my ratties so I know when I got them, when they were born within a month or so, and when and why they passed. I feed a generic dog food with 19% protein since the only lab blocks sold locally are soy or corn based. Soy causes cancer, and corn is GMO so I refuse to feed either. They are supplemented with fresh veggies, fruits, and brown rice as well as any meat I get that I know is hormone and antibiotic free. They get fresh water and it is mixed with grape seed extract daily.

I have 3 ferrett nations and 1 critter nation cages, all doubles. I use newspaper and fleece as floor covering and yesterday's news in the many litter boxes for all. They are kept clean and are regularly played with and handled. I love my babies and could never not play with them. They are so funny and they love to romp on the bed with me and hand wrestle. I have a couple who love to ride on my shoulder and a couple who love to just sit with me watching TV.

My file is organized by months instead of names but here they are.
Januay Babies:
Sand Man - M - Reg earred, red hooded. Born the 3rd, 2011. Adopted from Petco
Spook - M - Reg earred, dark hooded bare backed. Born 30th, 2011. Adopted from friend who breed him.

February Babies:
Dudley - M - Dumbo naked with black spot around his eye. Born 21, 2011. Adopted from breeder.

March Babies:
Obie Won - M - Dumbo light red color hooded with spotted back and small white dot on forehead. Born app. 11th 2011. From Pet Supplies Plus.

April Babies:
Sugar - F - reg eared, PEW. Born 4th, 2010. Adopted from Petco

May Babies:
Bones - M - Dumbo blue hooded with spot on back. Born 11, 2010. From Pet Supplies Plus.

June Babies:
Smegol - M - dumbo dark skined naked with very dark mask, possibly double rex. Born 27th 2011. From friend who bred him. Biter but can be nice when he wants to be.

September Babies:
Moonbeam - F - Charcoal or very dark colored self. Dumbo. From local pet shop. Born 3rd, 2011

Sunshine - F - Light sand colored dumbo with white. From same shop as Moonbeam. Was pregnant unknown at time of purchase. Born 3, 2011.

November Babies:
Sadie - F - Dark hooded dumbo with broken back colors. Born 1st, 2010. From Petco.

December Babies:

Susie - F - reg earred, dark hooded. Born 6th, 2010 from Petco
Rascal - M - Charcoal with white belly and charcoal line in middle, dumbo, has a very rough curly coat. Mother is Sunshine. Born on the 26th of 2011.
Magic -M - Charcoal with white belly no mark in the middle, dumbo, has a very rough, curly coat. Brother of Rascal. Born on the 26th of 2011.
HiWire - M - Charcoal hooded, thin line of color down his back. Dumbo with a semi curly coat. Mother Sunshine, born 26th, 2011.
Neville -M- Charcoal hooded with broken stripe down back. Dumbo with reg hair. Mother Sunshine. Born 26, 2011.
Little Big Boy -M- Charcoal hooded, wide black markings and long hair, dumbo. Mother Sunshine, born 26th, 2011.
7 females all Charcoal hooded with various white markings. All have regular coats. From same litter as the boys. Mother Sunshine, all dumbos, born 26th, 2011.

There was one other from that litter and she was given to a friend looking for a dark hooded female and is well as of this date.

I also have 6 wild ratus ratus that are 3 months old and yet unnamed. They were given to me by someone who rescued them from death but are not tame so I may yet turn them loose.

Theses are my babies and I love each and every one of them. The girls live in the double critter nation together and are quite the characters. They love to chase the hand and getting belly rubs. They all love their hammocks and yogies of course.

[AgeVivo]

Hi Maureen,

Welcome to Mprize at Home. We are very impressed and happy to find you.

We have sent you an email last week-end, as we do with everyone interested in participating, with a few questions to test how serious an mprize at home participant you would be (seem to be). Have you not received the email?

Please do not hesitate to let us know (by PM or at longevity at agevivo.com) how to contact you for personal information (mailing adress and skype username, for example). We are thinking of sending you some materials to help us test the feeding procedure on your side, while other pet owners are joining.

PS: do you think you could post some pictures of your pets here?

All the best,
AgeVivo

[Maureen Thomas]

Here are a couple of pictures of my minions. This is the link to my facebook page

There are some older pictures up too in the albums before this one. I hope this helps.

My mailing address is 8234 Autumn Oak Ave, Port Richey, FL 34668, USA. I am looking forward to hearing from you.

[SilverMyst7]

I received your email and I prefer to keep tract here or by email. I do not have a Google page account and have more than enough accounts at this time.

As far as having the placebo and the C60 I would like to know which was which. I would have no problem keeping them separate. I have 6 males all in separate cages, 5 males (brothers) together and the 11 females are also together. The females would be the hardest to do but it can be done since I can tell them apart from each other do to the different markings and personalities.

I have no problem using all my babies. I have acquired 6 Ratus Ratus that are males and about 4 months old at this time. I don't know if you want to include them since they are wild bred and their mother was killed so a friend rescued them and I have them now. They would have to all be in the same group since at this point I cannot tell one from the other.

[SilverMyst7]

I received the pipette but it was broken. It is the same type I use for meds. All of my ratties are trained to take fluids from them so that when and if I have to give meds they do not have to be scruffed. Currently I am treating all with amoxicillian for a URI. They fight over the pipette to get their meds. I mix it with strawberry syrup and they love it. They will take olive oil and water from them as well.

I do like your pipette because it has a piece that comes down into the nozzle. Ours here don't have that and can become plugged.

[AgeVivo]

Thank you for the feedback!

1) Conclusion for C60@home: I need to send things by mail in a protected package rather than a simple enveloppe. Slightly more expensive but I'll do that from now on.
2) I am then going to re-send you a pipette tomorrow.
3) I think it is better if we put the solution in bread first and then give the bread to the rat, isolated from other rats, to ensure that the dose is well take. You are certainly very at ease with rats but I am not sure that all experimenters will be. Could you do this and post picture(s)/video of it? (and with your technique if you want of course)

All the best.

[Mind]

Yes, we should stick with a standard feeding protocol. No food the night before, then the next day, feed the substance - soaked in bread - individually - to each mouse/rat.

[SilverMyst7]

Why no food the night before? Rats and mice have a very fast metabolism and are fed before surgery unlike other animals where food is withheld. I do not feel the need to not feed my babies and allow them to go hungry before giving them the substance. My rats love whole wheat bread with olive oil on it and will not hesitate to devour each piece given to them. They also have hard tack, sorry dry food available all the time, and there cooked meal is given each night. They only eat what is needed and it doesn't matter what time I give treats they immediately devour them. I have to disagree with this method unless you happen to have a very fussy rattie. Fortunately mine will eat anything given to them because they trust me to give them good stuff.

[AgeVivo]

Dear SilverMyst (*),

Interesting! Could you perhaps take a video of one of your rats having a piece of bread with olive oil, without changing anything to your habits?
Right now I'm not sure what to think: on the one hand you have many rats so we can compare treatment with placebo within your house so variations of your choice may not count that much; on the other hand here is why I proposed that they do not eat overnight before being treated, and you will see that... some elements seem important to me but perhaps it shouldn't: I let you see:

- it is what Baati et al did, so if we want to have some relatively close replication of their impressive results it would be better
- in labs it is very standard to have rats in a cage without food overnight before doing glucose test (for example) in the morning; I have worked in labs and did this many times. And it is not known to be bad for them: in the contrary an issue is that it could slightly increase their lifespan, and therefore should be done in the control too (http://en.wikipedia....mittent_fasting).
- it could be that the very strong life-extension observed by Baati et al. comes, not from C60 uniquely, but from the C60 + olive-oil + overnight-fasting. This is actually my bigger concern, as I won't know if we should statistically pool your results with other participants. Therefore as you can guess I would prefer that participants do not put food in the cage overnight before giving tratment-or-placebo, otherwise a non-life-extension could be interpreted in too many plausible ways.
- myself I have seen that once they have been used to it (not a novelty) my mice actually seem to like olive oil. But for the later reasons I continue to remove food overnight.
- it goes faster in the morning if the animals are hungry (they devore the bread very quickly); but I understand that if that was the only reason it may not be a good one after all.

In fact there is one other thing in your preferences that I would like to discuss: I understood that you prefer to know which of your rats eat olive oil and which of your rats eat C60-containing olive oil. Is it because you "want to know right now"? (,rather that several years later, who was receiving what) or that you think you might inadvertendly one day invert feedings (give treatment to a placebo-rat) which could ruin the experiment? Because oviously *not* knowing what is what has a strong interest in that you would not be subconsciously have a different care with the ones receiving C60 and the ones not receiving. Some view it as essential, others not, some have argued it is even better to know (I have a hard time thinking like the later but why not after all) and in the end we prefer that participants as happy with their choices.

All in all, I am trying to explain why I think that some approach is better but
a) I could be wrong / not have thought about something : if so it is very good feedback to be told about it. You obviously seem to have a very strong experience on rats at home; I have a strong experience on rats in scientific studies, it is certainly complementary for lifespan studies at home: between both there is certainly some adjustments to be thought about, and here we are clearly facing such a question.
b) I wouldn't want that you accept some procedures right now and later do differently at some time (and without telling it; that would be the worst thing to happen I think) as the experiment would be very difficult to interpret, also the experiment should be enjoyable.
c) If after the discussions we are having you prefer to do as you want, we should either accept it (and perhaps revise the procedure we had in mind initially?) or decide that you should not participate

So let us know what you think. If you want to send a video I think it would be interesting (perhaps also a video with the procedure we have proposed, if you feel like trying once, to see what it changes).

All the very best,
AgeVivo.

(*) Please let us konw if you prefer to be named with your pseudo or not, online.

[AgeVivo]

Dear Maureen,

Happy new year.
I am coming back to you more shortly only now. Rats can be fed before anesthesia because they do not vomit. Not eating overnight for a rat is not bad for them, in the contrary, in the long run at least, intermitten feeding is good for their health and lifespan in the long run. So
- if you want to perform the experiment with treatement or placebo and let your ratties be hungry once every other week (we think it's good for them), you are very welcome and I can send you again.
- if you want to give them C60 without making them hungry you can buy it yourself and post online about what they become. I can assist you in that if you are interested (and you will do what you want)
- if you do not want any of this, thank you at least for your interest.

Sincerely,
AgeVivo

[AgeVivo]

Hi Maureen, we have additional solutions of c60 or placebo. As discussed with the team you can use them with the protocol you want. Let us know. Cheers