Muskrat Tapeworm cysts?
 

Warning! You may not want to continue reading this thread, if you are also eating your breakfast.


A bunch of the rats I have caught this year have got these yellow-ish blobs growing on their livers. At first I thought perhaps it was Tularemia, but then found a couple that had it really bad, where the yellow-ish blobs were all throughout the guts.
Doing some googling I found a couple pics that had the similar yellow-ish stuff on the liver, where it was suggested that these were tapeworm cysts. But none of the pics I saw had the blobs outside the liver, or to the extent of some of these rats.

Some of the rats with this seem to be in good shape, with lots of fat on the hide. Some have little to no fat to scrape off.

Has anyone else seen these blobs, or know what they could be?

This rat had it only on the liver:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2822/3...e29639f0_c.jpg

This rat was a disaster inside:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2806/3...6f95f9b7_c.jpg

Sorry if I gave ya the Heebie Jeebies!
Graham.

Holy smokes skinned thousands of rats and never seen anything like that!! I don't trap them in the spring anymore maybe that's why I never ran across that. What area are you in if you don't mind me asking. East central myself. Never tons of fat on them in my area but healthy rats for the most part.

I am just east of Calgary

Are they just in one body of water. Or have you found them in the whole area? Hopefully it's not a new thing spreading thru our muskrat population.

At first I obviously didn't separate all the rats from the different ponds, to know which pond they came from. So, there are a couple ponds I am not sure about.

There are multiple ponds I know they came from. They are all within the same water shed though.

That is nasty. Have you emailed this to a biologist or fish in feathers?

I can give you the email for a biologist for the Alberta conservation association if you need one.

Yes. Someone PM'd me with a contact in the provincial government. No response yet.

Hope they get off their keesters and respond because that is what they are paid to do. Drop me a p.m if you don't mind my friend when you find out what the Frick that is if you remember me. Like I said i have trapped and skinned muskrats since 1979 in east central alberta and some years put up some serious numbers and never seen anything even close to that. Seen some bad infections from fighting and the odd pale liver bUT I try to keep from pulling the guts out when I skin by pulling gentle and laying them on a table when I give them the pull. Don't let your dog eat that if you have one. Good luck.