New Young Rat Thinks I'm Food and Bites Hard Enough to Draw Blood

The Rat Shack Forum

Help Support The Rat Shack Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
W

wamydia

Guest
Hi all.

I'm new to the forum and signed up so that I could get a little guidance with my new rat. I have previously had several male rats that were research rescues, so this is the first time I've had very young rats. I got these two from a pet store in a moment of weakness about 2 weeks ago (I was supposed to be buying water frogs, oops) because I missed my boys that had passed away last year. I now have just these two, both males. I'm not sure of their age exactly, but they were in the "medium" bin and maybe about half the size of the mostly full grown rats in the large bin. I'm guessing maybe 10-12 weeks?

The problem that has developed is that, as they have gotten more comfortable with me, the more active (and dominant I believe) rat, Will, will run right up to me and grab onto whatever part of my hand he can find and bite hard. He bites just hard enough to draw a few pricks of blood and pulls, so I'm sure that this is not aggressive biting. I think he's just very young and excitable and, for whatever reason, he's totally sure that anything that comes into the cage must be food. When I feed him from my hand, he grabs onto the food in the same exact way - with gleeful abandon and determination to make off with the food before his much calmer cagemate, Hood, can get to me. I think it's made worse because Will is a PEW and so he can't really see what exactly is going on.

I've been very careful about washing my hands and only presenting my fist or the back of my hand. I'm also making a point to talk and make noises when I approach, but this doesn't seem to make a difference. He'll still grab hold of me a few times and after I yell "ouch!" and make a big deal out of his hurting me, he usually eases up. But I haven't been able to make any headway with him and his initial reaction to latch on hard as soon as I put my hand near him. I'm starting to get nervous about putting my hand in the cage. It's also stopped me from really doing a lot of picking up and handling because he's gotten blood out of me several times now and I don't trust him. I realize that this is the worst reaction, so I'm trying to come up with new ways to break him of this before I accidentally end up making it worse. Suggestions?
 
This is a common issue with some over zealous rats. What I do is offer a treat that needs to be licked on a spoon. So offer the spoon, when he goes to grab it, he'll realize he bit into something hard and that he needs to lick. When he licks say the word lick or licky or whichever word you want to use. Eventually he will associate the word licky to licking the spoon. Switch to a wet treat on your fingers once he goes straight to licking and then eventually you can do harder foods but still say licky to slow him down.
 
Also, I always avoided putting my hand in my rats' cages because I respected their home and didn't want to "invade" it so to speak. I would clean their home when they were out or after giving them a treat. When I wanted to give them a treat in the cage, they had to come to the door and take it from me.
 
This is a common issue with some over zealous rats. What I do is offer a treat that needs to be licked on a spoon. So offer the spoon, when he goes to grab it, he'll realize he bit into something hard and that he needs to lick. When he licks say the word lick or licky or whichever word you want to use. Eventually he will associate the word licky to licking the spoon. Switch to a wet treat on your fingers once he goes straight to licking and then eventually you can do harder foods but still say licky to slow him down.
Thank you for the suggestion. I will definitely try this. I’ve been continuing to work with him and have been noticing a difference the last few days already. He’s still chomping down too hard about half the time but he’s been noticeably gentler. I think a big issue is just that his eyesight is so poor and putting my hand beyond the cage door is confusing him. I can now pretty reliablely pet and play with him at the cage door but he’s still at that stage where he wants to run off into the cage when I go to pick him up. Putting my hand into the cage to get him is still an adventure because he will grab anything that he senses coming near him and try to take it into their house to eat.
 
Also, I always avoided putting my hand in my rats' cages because I respected their home and didn't want to "invade" it so to speak. I would clean their home when they were out or after giving them a treat. When I wanted to give them a treat in the cage, they had to come to the door and take it from me.
Thanks for the input. Do you have any suggestions for working on handling them without actually putting your hand in the cage? I’ve always just picked my old rats up and taken them wherever. I’ve gotten these new ones very comfortable with coming out of their door, examining my hands, standing up to sniff my face, and letting me pet and hand feed them there (with an occasional chomp from Will). But they still are not keen on being picked up so I feel like I have to go into the cage to get them. I don’t want them to get into the habit of just running away every time I want to handle them. Also this is quite a large cage so it’s easy for them to take off and make me chase them. I do have a small conainter that I use for transport. Maybe I can get them to climb in willingly and then carry them off for play time.
 
For picking up doing the scoop method is best in my opinion. So like you would scoop water with both hands, scoop a rat. So what I do during out time, I scoop, give a kiss and put back down. I do this several times and they get used to it and don't mind it one bit.
 
Back
Top