How To Clean 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. First of all, make sure you've removed the rats from the cage and placed them into a pet carrier that's completely secure and that you can place this in another room so they're on a safe surface and no other animals can knock them or they can't escape.

It's a really good idea if you can place some of the rats' bedding in there so they'll feel nice and comfy and they've got their own smells and they'll feel sound and really familiar in there. So place them in there and place them out of the room whilst you're doing that. You would then need a dustpan and brush, a suitable bin liner and a pet disinfectant.

Remove all of the toys from the cage and that includes any rope ladders and any shelving as well. Completely remove it and then you'll need to use the pet disinfectant to spray them down and wash them down thoroughly. You'll then also need to spray the whole of the cage down with the pet disinfectant and that includes the bars and any corners.

Spray it down completely, leave it for a few minutes and then thoroughly wipe it all off. Make sure you have rinsed it all of in case the rats do try to ingest any of it. Once it's completely dry, you can then set it up fresh.

Make sure you either use shredded chopped paper or Carefresh. These can be lining the base of the cage, nice and thick layer, it's absorbent and safe for them to use. Never use wood shavings as this often are really bad for breathing problems and for parasites.

Once you've laid the base of it, you then want to add the toys. You don't need to use the same toys again and place them back into the same position. Try and make your own toys.

You could purchase a few new ones. If you're going to place some of the old ones in there, put them back in a new position. Make it interesting and make it challenging.

Rats are really intelligent and they love to learn new things. As you can see in this cage and in the cage here, we've got all sorts of objects for them to have lots of fun on. We've got house objects such as wine racks and we can even use different rope ladders and all sorts of hammocks for them to sleep on and hide in as well.

Place these in there, make it really fun and interesting, spend at least an hour setting it up and creating a real rat-fun place. You would then need to make sure that you clean your water bottle, remove this, use a water bottle brush, clean the whole bottle and the spout with warm water and then refresh it fresh water. The water bottle will need fresh water replaced in it everyday and then once a week, clean the water bottle out thoroughly.

When you place this back up, make sure that it's at height that the rat's not going to overreach or under-reach so that it's comfortable when they are drinking from it. Lastly, you'll need to add in the food. If you feed your rats by bowl, make sure you clean the bowls out.

So wash these thoroughly down and then you can place them in a new area. The alternative is you could scatter food around and you could even make toys such as this one in here. This one is just a toilet roll with some nice natural treats such as raw pasta and cereals not coated in sugar and then we just tie them up in some paper, and the rats are going to have great fun shredding this apart and finding real tasty and healthy treats.

Then, you can place the rats back in there and have lots of fun. And that's how to clean out a rat cage.