Feeding, Housing & Care
Jennas' Rat Room
The rat room is home to all of the rats, enabling them to have their own space, and for them to have a room they can do anything in, and free roam. The rats live in single sex groups in large spacious cages, with toys, hammocks and houses.
I currently use a mix of Ecopetbed and Hunter Shavings (Aspen shavings) or Bedmax, and use shredded paper for nestnig.
Sarahs' Rat Room
We would highly recommend the shredded cardboard bedding as it is easy to obtain from local farm shops, incredibly cheap and very absorbent, there are also no health risks associated with this bedding. If you’d like more information about shredded cardboard bedding or where to obtain some please contact us, as we usually keeps several bales of Ecobed in stock for other rat owners.
We prefer to keep our rats in larger same sex groups with plenty of space, beds, hammocks, toys and interesting contents to keep them living happily together. We avoid keeping rats alone, and only in extreme cases when rats are deeply unhappy with other rats, aggressive or recovering from illness and neutering does not work, do rats live without companionship.
Does with babies are kept in Duna tanks, Mary cages and similar style cages until they are more able and agile, at which point they are moved to a larger cage where they can exercise their new abilities and strength and the mother doe can 'escape' from them for a while! As 3-4 week old babies they are usually upgraded to Freddy 2 style cages, allowing more room for climbing, hammocks, and toys.
Our rats are fed on a homemade mix based on Straight grains. A usual mix contains equal parts of Flaked Peas, Crushed Oats, Whole Wheat, Flaked Maize and Rolled Barley, as well as small quantities of dog kibble, parrot food, human grade low sugar low salt cereals and dried fruit. The joys of making our own food means that from week to week it can be totally different, adding variety to the rats diet. As well as their usual dry mix they are regularly offered fruit and vegetables, such as apple, curly kale, carrots and broccoli, as well as other additional occasional extras such as chicken bones and eggs.
