Duff1113
New Member
Hi! It’s been a long time since I’ve been a part of a forum! A little about me: My husband and I have been together for 10 years now, married for 5. We live in central New York. I’m a stay at home mom of our 4 kids, ages 7,5,3, and 9 months. We also have quite the zoo going, a dog, 3 cats, 2 guinea pigs, and a snake... and now 2 ratties!
We just got two female rat babies for my three year old, after an awful experience with a hamster! We’ve only had them for a few days so I am still doing loads of research. My girl lovingly dubbed her pets Cookie and Cake, and is in absolute love with them, as are we all really! My husband said he wants to get rid of all our other animals and just get rats.
We have a small cage for now, in the next month I’d like to get a critter nation cage. We had one for our sugar gliders years ago and it was fantastic! They have a hut, tunnel, hammock, lava ledge, and wooden bird ladder in there now.
I’m currently trying to figure out bedding, we have carefresh in there now but our ratties are sneezing like crazy.
I just got a small bag of kaytee rat meal when we got them and was mixing that with a handful of dog food (nutro essentials ), per the Country Max store we got them from. Well, they feed them bird seed, blocks, and dog food but said the kaytee was fine. I have since ordered a bag Teklad Global 2018 and am planning on going to the grocery store to put together a mix I found online (of rolled oats, puffed rice, puffed wheat, toasted oats, Total, egg noodles, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, dried bananas, dried cranberries, and roasted soy nuts). I don’t think I’ll need the dog food then? I’m not seeing much of anything about dog food online for them.
Our water has fluoride in it... should I be buying bottled water for them then?
Also, all day yesterday, Cookie has been sleeping on the shelf, wrapped around or inside of the food dish.... is she just weird? Could she have been hot? It was on the warm side in the room. But until then, she’d been sleeping curled in the bedding in the corner, or inside the hut with Cake. It was much cooler though so I’m wondering if she was just hot?
We just got two female rat babies for my three year old, after an awful experience with a hamster! We’ve only had them for a few days so I am still doing loads of research. My girl lovingly dubbed her pets Cookie and Cake, and is in absolute love with them, as are we all really! My husband said he wants to get rid of all our other animals and just get rats.
We have a small cage for now, in the next month I’d like to get a critter nation cage. We had one for our sugar gliders years ago and it was fantastic! They have a hut, tunnel, hammock, lava ledge, and wooden bird ladder in there now.
I’m currently trying to figure out bedding, we have carefresh in there now but our ratties are sneezing like crazy.
I just got a small bag of kaytee rat meal when we got them and was mixing that with a handful of dog food (nutro essentials ), per the Country Max store we got them from. Well, they feed them bird seed, blocks, and dog food but said the kaytee was fine. I have since ordered a bag Teklad Global 2018 and am planning on going to the grocery store to put together a mix I found online (of rolled oats, puffed rice, puffed wheat, toasted oats, Total, egg noodles, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, dried bananas, dried cranberries, and roasted soy nuts). I don’t think I’ll need the dog food then? I’m not seeing much of anything about dog food online for them.
Our water has fluoride in it... should I be buying bottled water for them then?
Also, all day yesterday, Cookie has been sleeping on the shelf, wrapped around or inside of the food dish.... is she just weird? Could she have been hot? It was on the warm side in the room. But until then, she’d been sleeping curled in the bedding in the corner, or inside the hut with Cake. It was much cooler though so I’m wondering if she was just hot?