dirty cages

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raindrop

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 21, 2007
Messages
787
Location
North Bay Ontario
Lately our two sets of girls have been very dirty. Alot of poo and pee in their cages. There are four females in each Martin's 695. Any suggestions of why they have started to do this. It is major cleaning every night.

Ann
 
raindrop said:
Lately our two sets of girls have been very dirty. Alot of poo and pee in their cages. There are four females in each Martin's 695. Any suggestions of why they have started to do this. It is major cleaning every night.

Ann

How old are they? Do you use litterpans and what litter do you use? Whats their bedding? Any other details like that you can think of?
 
The litterpans have yesterday news in them. I have tried aspen on the bottom of the cages but I found that they stunk from it after two days so I removed it. The one cage has 4 girls. Three sisters who will be a year old on boxing day and one that is about 1 1/2 years old (rescue?).
In the other cage 1 of the girls is about 1 year old and the three sisters are 6 months old. I had placemats on the levels but removed them too. Replaced it with chloraplast to protect their feets. They are being feed nurti-blocks from living world. The nutri-blocks were hard to find for awhile so I wandering if they have changed their ingredients.It seems to have started more since I opened the last bag of nutri-blocks which is from a new batch. Only problem is that there isn't much else in this city to buy.

Ann
 
Take up all coverings on levels, and just scrub the cages down every week. I don't know much about Nutri=block but if the formulation has changed thats a distinct possibility. What is your bedding now?
 
While I don't know about pee, check the ingredients on the Nutriblocks. If there's alfalfa in them, that could be causing the sudden increase in the poo. Alfalfa isn't digestible by rats, so it's just run right through the system.
 
I agree with Shelagh. Just let them live on the wire and then do a full scrub down every 5 days - 1 week. The pee and most of the poo will fall down through the bars. I was able to do once a week scrub down in the bathtub when I had four rats living in my R695.
 
Are the girls getting extra veggies or fruits in their diet? If this is coinciding with the last bag of nutriblocks, you may have to wait it out... if it is a change in ingredients, you just have to wait for tummies to get used to it.
 
fruit can be a real culprit at times, heavy on veggies but occasional on fruit is my motto.

How are their poops these days? Lighter coloured, squishy, offensive odour?
 
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