How to Prepare for your New Rat

Learn the minimum requirements for housing pet rats.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• cage
• bedding
• food
• water bottle
• toys
• treats

1. Cage
   Make certain that the cage you pick out allows for two cubic feet of room per rat. The cage must have solid floors (on all levels); wires can lead to a condition commonly called ‘bumblefoot’. It is an inflammation of the tendons that is incredibly painful and untreatable. Only buy a cage with powder coated bars and a plastic bottom; exposure to most metal cage material can cause zinc poisoning in rats. Never house a rat in a tank—they have delicate respiratory systems and ammonia build up ca quickly cause deadly upper respiratory infections in rats.

2. Bedding
   Only use aspen or a product like Carefresh. Cedar and pine contain oils that irritate the delicate respiratory systems of most small animals.

3. Toys
   Provide your rats with cardboard tubes and boxes, edible treats, and wooden chews. Vary the toys and treats often so that your rats don’t get bored. They are incredibly intelligent, and need constant mental stimuli. Try to find toys that you can hide treats inside of—they’ll have a blast figuring them out.

4. Feeding
   Feed your rat either Harlan Teklad Lab blocks, Innova Senior dog food, or SueBee mix. The recipe for SueBee Mix can be found on a multitude of websites. To find the recipe, type ‘SueBee rat mix’ into your favorite search engine. Always provide your rats with a bottle of fresh water. Even a few hours without water could potentially kill your rats.

Tips & Warnings

• Always provide an igloo or nest box to help rats feel secure.
• Provide something soft (such as an old towel or tee shirt) for rats to sleep on.
• Never keep rats singly. No matter how much time you spend with them, they need other rats.
• Rats require at least one hour a day outside their cage to interract with you. Without interraction, they will be skittish andpossibly become agressive.
• Do not feed citrus (especially oranges) to male rats; as it has been known to cause cancer. Citrus does not seem to have this effect on females.

[goblinqueen]

on 11/3/2007 helped me alot