My Lovely Rats

After four days of intensive “enforced socialisation” handling of my rats (that’s 20 minutes each times four!) they are slowly beginning to trust me and will sit my palm for a few moments and sniff my nose. It’s been difficult finding 80 minutes in the day, since I’m a mum of three girls, and work part-time too! The only buck who seems to be reluctant to accept me is Shy-Shy who insists on finding a corner of my clothes to shoot out of and scarper off onto the floor! For the other three rats it seems to be working, and my daughters get to play gently with them in a big box on the floor, (but they are not supposed to pick them up yet - although my three year old has different ideas!).

Sleepy Pip

It was clean-out day today. Rat’s cages should be cleaned out thoroughly once a week, and new litter/bedding put in. I do a “spot check” every day to remove any of the previous day’s fresh food that might have spoilt (mould is harmful to rats), and a quick swap of very soiled bits of litter with a new portion. When I did the whole cage I put the young ratties in their “travel tank” (a plastic tank with air holes and a lid), they just snoozed away as it was the morning and rats are nocturnal which means they are more lively during the evening and night. It took me a couple of hours to clean out, but my three year old daughter was “helping” so it probably took longer than normal. I have a Furplast Furet Extra Large cage which is really huge and brilliant for lots of rats (it will house up to six bucks comfortably). On the whole it’s a great cage, the rats love the space, but it’s difficult to get to them, so I have to coax them all to the bottom of the cage, and lift the whole top off. This wouldn’t be a problem with tamer rats, as they would probably just come out by themselves. Hopefully ours will be doing that in the next few weeks.

Today my rats have been mostly eating fresh garlic and herb pasta parcels with (cooked) sweetcorn (maize).

Tags: Baby Rats, Handling and Taming //