How To Care For Pet Rats

I'm going to tell you how to care for pet rats. Rats should always be kept in either pairs or small groups. They love the companionship of their own kind as well as human companionship.

Here, you can see we've got three rats living really happily together in this accommodation here. You can keep them in groups of 4 to 6 quite comfortably. Always ensure they're the same sex groups or you have a castrated male with a few females.

If you are going to consider having males and females, please bear in mind that you could have lots of babies really very quickly, so be responsible as there are many rats in rescue shelters. Before taking rats home, you need to make sure that you are able to provide suitable accommodation, food and enrichment for them. First of all, you need to choose a cage.

This example here is the smallest we would recommend for 2 to 3 rats. You can fill this as you can see with all sorts of enrichment to keep them fun, keep them active, and also obviously you can get them out everyday to have lots of free ranged time in your house. We've also got another example here which is a small bird cage.

Again, when you are choosing these styles, make sure they're got really small bar mesh. Some of these cages can have wider bars which smaller female rats can escape from. There are many cages on the market.

We've got all sorts of bird aviaries, chinchilla style cages and parrot cages, but whatever, make it as big as you can possibly afford and provide a space in your house. They are active and they are fairly large animals who move around a lot, so you need to make sure that you can provide that for them. Secondly, you need to consider enrichment.

Rats love to be able to forage, investigate new things and have new toys included in their accommodation. In this accommodation here, we've got great examples. We've got homemade hammocks, ladders for them to cross, and we've even got a wine rack in here which makes a great climbing frame.

There are many toys on the market and they're available in pet shops, re-homing centers and on the internet, but you can consider making them. Many children's toys and home objects like the wine rack, tubs, and we've even got hanging baskets here which could be tied to the side of the cage and have towels placed in there for them to snuggle into. So, be imaginative with your enrichment and everytime you clean it out, make it something different and keep it interesting.

When you do need to clean out your cages, ideally, the whole cage should be cleaned out at least once a week. All the toys and enrichment need to come out and be thoroughly cleaned and the cage need to be thoroughly cleaned as well. It's best if you use a pet disinfectant, and as I mentioned, all the toys and enrichment should be cleaned with this.

Leave it on for a few minutes, wipe it down and then you can refill the cage. Be creative with your enrichment. Don't put it back in the same place and add new things, take away old things and put it in different areas.

They've got to forage for it is something new. You then need to consider bedding material. Never house rats on wood shavings.

This is really bad for parasites and for breathing issues which is quite common in rats, so avoid these. Also, if your family's got asthma or any allergies, often, wood shavings can irritate this as well. So, steer clear with them.

The best option is either short shredded chopped paper, and this is free. If you've got a paper shredder at home, you can do this yourself, so you can provide a nice thick layer on the base of the cage and that's absorbent and easy to clean. The other option you could go for is a product such as Carefresh.

This is basically crushed egg carton material and it's absorbent and you can place them a real nice thick layer across there and it's safe against parasites and any allergies as well. So once you place the bedding material, you then also need to have other materials a