How To Choose Pet Rat Cages

Hi, my name's Marie. I'm the deputy manager of the Small Animal Department at Wood Green Animal Shelters and I'm going to tell you how to care for rats. I'm going to tell you how to choose rat cages.

Rats should always be kept in either pairs or small groups. They love the companionship of their own kind. For this reason, you need to make sure that your chosen rat cage is as large as you can possibly afford and provide.

This example here is the smallest example we would give for 2 to 3 rats as a maximum housed in here. As you can see, this is created as lots of space to be able to provide lots of enrichment. Rats are very very intelligent, so you need to be able to add to the enrichment that you're also provided when you buy the cage.

In most cases when you buy a cage, they generally provide you with a water bottle, a couple of shelves and maybe some tunnels but you need to add to this, it simply won't do. Every week when you clean them out, you need to add new things in, change things around, make new things, and keep it active. So if you can buy a big spacious cage like this, you can really use it as a blank canvas and fill it up with all sorts of tunnels and hammocks and climbing frames.

There are also options such as bird aviaries, indoor bird aviaries, parrot cages and chinchilla cages. You can get them standing at anything between 5 and 6 feet in height. When you are choosing cages that haven't been nested and designed for rats, make sure, like this one, they've got really small bars.

Small female rats can squeeze through the bigger bars and make sure you are cautious and if you're buying from the internet, maybe ask for a few comments on it and ask other people's opinions. Again, as you can see, this one was a blank canvas. We've been able to place in a few shelves and what we'll later do is fill it with all sorts of enrichments and tunnels for them to be able to have lots of fun.

So like I said, when you choose the accommodation, as big as you can afford, don't get anything smaller than this, make sure the bars are plenty small enough that the rats can't squeeze through. Add lots of enrichment, use the correct bedding and keep them fun, keep them active and make sure you are allowing the rats to come out everyday for free ranged time in a secure room. And that's how to choose a rat cage. .