Tips for new rattie parents

[Chelipepper]

There are lots of different cages and ditto for toys, bedding, food, etc U will undoubtably find what works right for u, but if youre looking for out of the box suggestions -here are some of mine :

1. Bedding - DONT use pine or cedar, they can be toxic to your ratties. Newspaper and newspaper products are rat friendly but dont do much in the way of odor control and can become saturated with urine. Same goes for just about everything that comes in a bag and is fluffy, puffy and multicolored. The harder pelleted bedding can be tough on rat tootsies..my suggestion is to either go with a corn-cob or corn-coblike bedding (kaytee soft sorbent)and add a little of the crinkled paper bedding so they can nest if they like. If u have easy access and dont mind laundering, fleece makes a nice cage bottom liner too (remember to factor in time and work for fleece since u will have to change the cage at least twice a week if u fleece. Daily shake-outs of solid waste helps keep the cage clean tho.)


2. Odor Control DONT add any type of chemical odor control to your bedding - IF and only IF they are in an open cage and not an aquarium type set up, u can toss in some crushed dried rosepetals or even some dried lavendar buds (Which both can be purchased in bulk from a soapmaking company called Wholesale Supplies Plus for a verrrry reasonable price) DO buy one of those lovely automatic scent sprayers but make sure it is far away from the ratties and pointed away from them ..pick up some Odor Neurtralizing spray from Lysol to go into your automatic sprayer (Lysol brand cans will also go into the Glade Sprayers , same goes for Air Wick) Set your sprayer to go off every 30 mins and u have 2 months of "Ahhhhhh" Remember to do a daily or at the most every-2 day cleaning of solid waste and remove any uneaten fresh foods ie fruits and veggies daily from the cage. Once a month give your ratties a bath -especially your boys :lol:

3. DO buy a dustbuster - it makes picking up kicked out corncob and tossed out seeds so much easier.

4. DO buy an inexpensive small cage for official cage cleaning days - it makes life so much easier in keeping the ratties in one place and seriously cuts down the chance of "oops" litters if u have more than one gender of rats. They double nicely as 'hospital' cages and are also a comfortable carrier.

5. DO make sure your rat has a rattie friend .. rats are social and need the company of other rats for play, grooming and socialization. Make sure u are keeping it to same sex pairs-even very young rats can breed.

6. DO make sure your rattie has places to climb, sights to see and things to do. Rats are very curious and easily bored :shock: Give them hammocks and ledges to make sure their cage is multileveled and they have places to explore and hang out. DO make sure u cover any bar-like ledges with some plastic canvas so your babies dont develop bumblefoot..For extra ledging, u can invest in some snap on gutter protectors (Sweer makes a very nice brand that a lot of hardware stores carry -they are just the right size for ledges and can easily be connected to cage bars via plastic tie wraps) U can also invest in a rabbit or ferret corner litter pan that can hang on the top levels of your cage - the ratties love to use it as a bed and if u are lucky and can get the one from SuperPet that has the wire bar grating on it (they call it a litter filter), u can take that, put some plastic canvas on it and tie wrap that sucker up to give your babies another corner ledge.

7 DO make sure u have the name of a good "exotic" pet vet BEFORE your pet gets sick. Rats metabolisms are very fast and they can be taken down very quickly by an illness.

8. DO make sure u do some homework on food for your rat. Suebee has a wonderful recipe for a food blend that u can google-up. My rats love it :happydance: There are also other great nutritional blends of food out there that u can whip up for your rat, which when u add some fresh veggies, fruits and some occasional cooked meat and pasta -will make sure your pet is healthy, happy and unbored. DONT give into the temptation to overfeed your ratties sweet tooth. Keep the chocolate to yourself (and beware peanut butter, your baby can choke on it if its not mixed with something else) DO get into the kitchen and make/bake some of your rattie treats! u will kno exactly whats in them and i swear your ratties will appreciate them even more than the store bought kind -same goes for whipping up your own rat recipe of food .. Mine do -

PS Rats love mealworms -as in eating them. Dont overdo it tho as u want to watch the protein level.

Hope this info is helpful to some :mrgreen:

 

[lilangel]

Just thought to add to your post Nice into for new owners.

Aquarium type set ups is no good for rats at all.

For bedding i herd the corn stuff not too great as rats tend to eat it like most small rodents will. Aspen and carefresh and yesterdays news(for litter boxes) are better for them. If using a cage like ferret nations fleece is also good.

For food the best thing is give them block food like Harlan Teklad or Oxbow along with Suebee's diet (feed this only once a week as if you feed daily they will tent to only eat that and eat only what they like; like the seeds and stuff witch is very fating for them)

a dustbuster(i find they do not suck as much) is good too but a shop vac is even better

 

[emerson]

Yah, corncob bedding molds quickly when wet and some rats eat it, I find aspen is great with odor and is safe, and carefresh of course is great, and I have heard yesterdays news is great too but haven't tried it yet.

 

[jorats]

What a great post... and we can keep adding to it too. :thumbup:

 

[Chelipepper]

thanks for the kind words

lilangel - my recipe for my ratties is actually a variation of the suebee diet .. i feed my over 4 month old guys a mixture of 1/2 the grain mixture of the Suebee diet (ramped up with a bit more dried fruit and a tad less sunflower seeds-altho i use the black oil ones for their skin/fur) and the other half is oxbow pellets .. the younglings (under 4 months old) get a mix of 1/2 my modified suebee grain mix and 1/2 innova puppy food -and they bypass on the mealworms because the innova is higher in protein. They dont mind anyway cause they think the mealworms are gross i think and it freaks them when the mealworms move so they drop them. My older guys eat the mealworm like they were spaghetti tho .. :sick2: ..especially Jefe ..yucko lol

ive never had issues with corncob or with the kaytee soft stuff , but my guys arent generally gnawers. if they ever do start eating it tho, u guys have given me some awesome new ideas to try :joy:

Thanks all! ...and please do continue to add to this post -it was my hope people would :thumbup:

 

[SQ]

A good quality lab block (such as Harlan Tech, Oxbow Regal Rat or the Living World/Hagen extrusian hamster lab block) should make up 80% of a rats diet. The other 20% is made up of daily vegs, occassional fruit and treats such as cooked oatmeal, cereals, baby cereal, boiled egg, etc. Watch the salt and sugar content in treats.

There is a lot of info. posted in the diet section of this forum.

 

[lilangel]

lilangel - my recipe for my ratties is actually a variation of the suebee diet .. i feed my over 4 month old guys a mixture of 1/2 the grain mixture of the Suebee diet (ramped up with a bit more dried fruit and a tad less sunflower seeds-altho i use the black oil ones for their skin/fur) and the other half is oxbow pellets .. the younglings (under 4 months old) get a mix of 1/2 my modified suebee grain mix and 1/2 innova puppy food -and they bypass on the mealworms because the innova is higher in protein. They dont mind anyway cause they think the mealworms are gross i think and it freaks them when the mealworms move so they drop them. My older guys eat the mealworm like they were spaghetti tho .. :sick2: ..especially Jefe ..yucko lol

Yes some people do give them a suebee diet(weekly and along with lab blocks) minus some items or switch items around but its not the greatest for them in the long run. Since most rats take what they like most out of it. example say one rat likes the dog food and the other rat likes the fruits and both only eat that and then you think aw good girls you ate all your food. Well they would not be getting all the nutrition out of the food.

But yes what you do is also good at least they get a block too the oxbow.

I was just pointing out to people that they should not only feed their rats suebee's diet or a seed mix but have a good lab block with it

Also for food no seed mix at the pet store's is really good for them (not saying you do Chelipepper just wanted to add that to the post also :wink2: )


My rats liked mealworms also but i have not gotten some in such a long time i truly forgot about that.

 

[Chelipepper]

thanks for the suggestions re food .. im actually going attempt to reformulate mine a bit now and thanks to another post here, get a 20# bag of the Native Earth from Harland, replace the Oxbow (which my guys seem to hate anyway) with that and then change the ratio from 50/50 on the Suebee grain mix vs pellets to 75% pellets and 25% grain mix..

 

[trexgorawrrrrr]

something i would suggest for a liner on wires is actually a terrarium liner made for reptiles. it's made by zilla... i definately don't like using fleece. fleece is the next best thing, but my ratties chew it up to pieces, and it doesn't last long. using fleece can get quite expensive, so if you're looking for a way to cut down on costs i would say go with terrarium liner. it may not be that pretty (only in brown and green) but it's reuseable, and i've never had any of my rats chew it up. i think they just accept it as their floor and nothing more. the way to clean it is to take it outside and hose it down... you can see when it's clean because the water will run clear instead of yellow... and then you just let it dry for about an hour or so. i reccomend this for wire floors more than anything else! i actually was going to post a topic just about this as a suggestion... before i knew anyone else with ratties, i had no one to ask... so i tried several things like fleece, plastic, linoliem, and the tarrarium liner is the best. it soaks up the urine, doens't get chewed up, and is reuseable/washable. all you do is hose it down, let it dry, and put it back in your cage. i hated having linolium, and plastic. the pee would just sit there with nothing to soak into and my ratties would be trampeling all around in it... i would have to give all the levels a good whipe down 2-3 times a day... now i just use my terrarium liner and wash it weekly. it's also inexpensive... most of the time can be found at your local petstores or any petco petsmart.

 

[lilangel]

something i would suggest for a liner on wires is actually a terrarium liner made for reptiles. it's made by zilla... i definately don't like using fleece. fleece is the next best thing, but my ratties chew it up to pieces, and it doesn't last long. using fleece can get quite expensive, so if you're looking for a way to cut down on costs i would say go with terrarium liner. it may not be that pretty (only in brown and green) but it's reuseable, and i've never had any of my rats chew it up. i think they just accept it as their floor and nothing more. the way to clean it is to take it outside and hose it down... you can see when it's clean because the water will run clear instead of yellow... and then you just let it dry for about an hour or so. i reccomend this for wire floors more than anything else! i actually was going to post a topic just about this as a suggestion... before i knew anyone else with ratties, i had no one to ask... so i tried several things like fleece, plastic, linoliem, and the tarrarium liner is the best. it soaks up the urine, doens't get chewed up, and is reuseable/washable. all you do is hose it down, let it dry, and put it back in your cage. i hated having linolium, and plastic. the pee would just sit there with nothing to soak into and my ratties would be trampeling all around in it... i would have to give all the levels a good whipe down 2-3 times a day... now i just use my terrarium liner and wash it weekly. it's also inexpensive... most of the time can be found at your local petstores or any petco petsmart.

for that too can you machine wash it? i wonder because here in winter it would be hard to hose down lol

 

[trexgorawrrrrr]

lol i agree on the hosing down in winter! i actually have never tried to machine wash it... i can sure try though, and get back to you... normally in the winter i put it in my bathtub... the water that the shower water comes out of in my bathroom is attached to a hose... so i normally just use that when it's too cold. but like i said i'll try machine washing to see how it works.

 

[lilangel]

Oh yeah shower duh me >.< that would work too. do not try in case you ruin it then i made you waste money lol please don't. i can try searching the name of the item and sometimes it will say online.

they say just rinse under cold water and reuse but im wondering what about cleaning it? like with dish soap or something i mean to be sure all the germs and such are off? have you tried that?

i did find the product though http://www.zilla-rules.com/products/bed ... -liner.htm

i will try it i want to see for the ferret nations

 

[trexgorawrrrrr]

lol okay then i wont! but i've never tried using soap. i wouldn't want there to be any left inside of it... i honestly think by just rinsing it all out it is clean. and it's easy to tell when all the pee is out because the water runs clear. i normally run it through water for a few minutes after it's running clear just to be sure lol...

i would have never even though of it, but has it recommended to me by a pet store employee. i was asking for something like fleece, but that would soak up urine... ect. and she suggested that, and i love it. i have a smaller cage than the FN... but it should work for it! or at least i hope it does! other wise i would feel bad for suggesting it! i know it would probably be better if there was a way to secure it down. i did have it on a ramp, but it always fell off.. so i used little binder clips to keep it attached... which worked out pretty well.