How To Gather Pet Rat Supplies

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 gather rat supplies.

There are many different options for you to be able to find rat cages, rat enrichment, cleaning products and food products. You can look on the internet, your local pet shops, rescue shelters, even go to the charity shops, and car boot sales and even jumble sales where you'll find all sorts of ideas for enrichment and bedding materials as well. When first considering on taking on a rat, you're going to need to make sure that you're able to provide a good quality and large cage.

The cage we've got in this example here is the smallest that we would suggest for 2 to 3 rats. These can be available in nearly all pet shops, you can buy them online and you could also contact your local rescue shelters who often have many second-hand cages available. You could also consider converting an indoor bird aviary, chinchilla aviary or ferret aviary.

Make sure if you do go to the shops that it has small bars that the rats can't escape through, and again, you might be able to find this on your local free ads, internet or even in your local charity shops as well. So have a look around, they are available out there but make sure you can provide a really big rat cage. You then need to consider purchasing bedding.

You can either use a product called Carefresh and this is available in most pet shops and on the internet as well. This is the best type of bedding for rats, this is absorbent and it's safe from parasites and it's dust-free to protect them from breathing issues. Avoid wood shavings as this is often really really bad for parasites.

The other option you could use is shredded paper and this should be the short type and this can be free. If you've got a shredder at home, you could make your own rat bedding. The rats will also need materials to go into their actual sleeping area.

You can use soft shredded tissue paper which can be placed inside the houses. You could also consider using some old towels or old socks, jumpers, which again, could be stuffed in their house areas and they love snuggling up into these. So these can be free or you could purchase them from your local shops.

You need a pet disinfectant to clean out your rat cages. Every week, the rat cages are going to need to be thoroughly cleaned out. The rats are going to need to be removed from it, placed into a carry cage, and you need to remove all the toys and disinfect the cage and the toys.

So make sure you've got a really good quality pet disinfectant. Leading them from that, you're going to need a suitable pet carrier. You may need this to take your rats to the vet or simply when you're cleaning them out.

Make sure it's quite a large one so the rats can sit comfortably in it and go to sleep whilst you're doing that. It's a good idea to place some of their bedding in there already so they've got their own smell and that will help them feel nice and calm and relaxed. When you finish cleaning out your rats when using it, make sure you use the pet disinfectant to clean that out.

These are available on the internet, on pet shops and on probably most of your local rescue shelters as well. And you'd quite easily get this from many charity shops second-hand as well, so have a look around but it's a really good idea to invest into one of those. Enrichment, toys, can be free, or you can purchase them from shops.

You can get ideas like these bendy sticks. You can get hammocks and plastic houses as demonstrated in these cages. The other option is the free option.

You could consider making your own rat toys and finding toys around your house. Children's toys are often brilliant so you can add these into the accommodation. You could also consider using things like wooden wine racks and they're really in for the rats to climb on and hide into