General Age A Rat Stops Growing

[Little_Vixen]

I've been wondering the past few days since I took a peek at the rats and children thread where I saw those pretty rats and how big they are, if there is an estimated age that a rat will stop growing?

Also, I know females can be roughly half the size of the males but if anyone could give me approx. sizes/lengths I'd really appreciate it ^=^

When I had to give my girls away I don't think they were done growing yet so I can't be sure on female lengths. And I know the size of a full grown rat will make the size of the cage differ and I think I'm planning on looking into male rat and they are bigger so I was wondering ^=^

 

[jorats]

In my 8 years of having rats, I've noticed that rats generally stop growing at about 7 months. But... that's not to mean they don't get fat.
In the past when I used to feed my rats dog food and suebees mix, my rats were obese and so unhealthy, sick. But my vet set me straight and I started to feed them a healthy rat block and veggies. My rats became slim. Today, I pretty much only have a couple of boys that remain obese but they were born from a very small litter, they came out chubby boys.

What should a rat look like? Take a look at a wild squirrel. You can see their slim bodies, their muscles are defined, you know where the tummy is and the thigh. That's how it should be with our rat. If the rat sits and you only see a blob of a body, you can't see where his tummy ends and his thigh starts, then it's a fat rat.
I don't like going by weight so much because some rats are longer and bigger boned. But generally... males should be around 500 grams and females should be about 300 grams.

 

[Little_Vixen]

Oh I know they'll get fat, in fact, the black and white rat I'd had before Seraphina, was actually a bit chubby when we got her, all sitting on her tail with her tummy pooched out. It was adorable, she started losing the extra weight and started looking like a really fit rat when we'd had her home for a while.

What about lengths? The general length of a male to female rat. I know males can get up to somewhere around 13 inches if I remember right.

We fed ours a mix that the petstore we bought them from (yes, I bought them from a petstore), had a special mix they mixed themselves for small animals, rats, rabbits. All different types. And we fed them little treats of the veggies we had and on occasion when we had spagetti, we'd treat them to a string. I plan on keeping my rats as healthy as possible, with yummy good good treats now and then, so I don't plan on letting my ratties get very chubby.

What do you think would be a good size cage for someone planning on having two to three male rats?

 

[Moon]

Take a look at the cage calculators we have posted in the Habitat section, and put in the dimensions of some of the cages you're considering. Then subtract about 2 to allow for males.

I don't see why you need rat lengths so badly, LOL, as they really can vary as much as their weights can. But I don't know what the "average" is.

Mixes of all sorts are typically a bad idea for rat food, as they can pick out what they want and not get a balanced meal.

 

[Rachael]

I've noted around 10 months but some of mine have grown until 12 months.

 

[Rachael]

On the other hand, I've had rats stop growing at 8 weeks old (unhealthy in general).

 

[jorats]

A rat cage, I've always said the bigger the better.

 

[Little_Vixen]

I was just figuring length=size and that might have been a deciding factor for a cage? Plus I was just a bit curious
I don't have any cages considered yet, I was wondering if there was a particular size needed for 3 rats to be comfortably kept before I start to look at cages.
There's one cage, the cage that we'd had before, that was huge and would be adequite for them, but I don't remember the dimensions or the brand, I'll have to post a pic of it sometime to see if I could get some help. With the supply shelf under it it was taller than me by just a few inches, I'm 4'11'' so it was about a few inches over 5 feet. The supply shelf was about a foot tall so I'm guessing the cage was around 4'3'' tall maybe 3' wide, 2' deep. We had 3 levels for it. I guess I can put in those dimensions while I look for the cage brand and see if that works ^-^

The questions about size were mainly for my curiosity because it had popped into my head after seeing some fullgrown male rats

They were actually pretty good about eating all of their food. Though this time I'll be getting some rat blocks because we never got any of those when I had Seraphina and Isis

 

[Moon]

Well, typically when shopping for a cage we tell people to aim for one with a base that's at least 30x18" to give ample running room.. the height will then dictate how many rats can live inside.

So you have a few options that come to mind right away.... You could do a single Ferret Nation or Critter Nation, they're the same size with different bar spacing. Cage calcs say you can put 6 in a single, I prefer 4-5, especially if you have males. They would be a wonderful size for three boys

A Martin's R-680 cage calcs at 3 rats, so does the 685 but the 685 has a full level that SEEMS like a good idea but makes for a tiny door on the front.. so if you went for two boys a 680 would work. A Martin's R-695 is a great cage and would give AMPLE room for three boys, and calcs at 5 rats so you could probably squish a 4th boy in if you wanted to.

If you like Super Pet cages, the exotics cage would be fine for three boys (cage calcs at 4 rats), and most of their ferret cages would be fine for a handful of rats.... but a lot of people don't like SP cages because of the amount of plastic and the way the shelves are designed. I was always happy with my SP cage, though.

The other thing to keep in mind is bar spacing. If you adopt some adult males, an FN or the SP cages with 1" bar spacing would be fine. But, this spacing is WAY too big for females and babies, so if you're adopting babies you'll want to keep that in mind.

Finally, some people are fine with the cage calculator's suggestions for number of rats in a cage. Some people (like me) want a bit more space per rat.... shelves and levels can make a difference, as a very tall cage with just a few levels would seem like a great idea but the lack of floorspace would actually make it pretty unsuitable.

Oh, and someone on the forum has been showing off their very cool Kritter Koncepts cage... so that might be worth a look for you

 

[Little_Vixen]

Thanks for the input on cages, that's really going to help ^_^. I plan to have a cage that definately has more room than what a cage calc says just in case say, we wanted 3 instead of 2, or 4 instead of 3. When we do start looking I'm thinking about getting a safe 3.

I'll be adopting as young as I can so I'll need one with 1/2inch spacing, for now at least. Or I guess when I start getting ready for the ratties in the first place The one I had before was large and said it could fit around 6 from what Judy had said, she helped take care of the rats with me, it had a nice 3 levels, the bottom, a half level, and two half levels on top, you know the ones that just take up little less than half a side of a cage? These took up about a quarter actually but they definately had enough romp room =) My ratties loved it.
If I can I'll be trying to find a cage like the one I had before, but I have to get the pictures off our external hardrive to see if I can get some help with that.