How To Make Rat Toys

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 make rat toys.

Rats are very intelligent and they love to be challenged. It's really important with their accommodation that you fill the accommodation with lots of enrichment, new toys and change it around. Don't be afraid to add variations, build things up at heights different textures and materials.

I'm going to give you three really good examples of homemade toys. First of all, we've got a treat toy. You just need a toilet roll and a bit of paper.

Just roll up the paper with the toilet roll inside and at one end just turn it into a bit of a Christmas cracker. Then you can get some natural treats, just treats from around the kitchen really, so you can use all sorts of home cereals. Make sure these aren't coated in sugar.

You can also used dried pasta, rice, we've got dried vegetables, we can also use different types of carrot and squash pieces as well. You can add in there all sorts of cereals and pulses such as pumpkin seeds and you could also try a little bit of budgie seed as well. So, place a bit of that in there so we've got a nice amount in there, and just do the same with that end.

Place that in the cage. You could place it one of the shelves or hide it under something. That way, the rats are going to pull it out, they're going to chew this paper apart which is perfectly safe, the same with the toilet roll, and they're going to find a real nice tasty and healthy treat inside.

That's your first toy for your rats. Another one would be, again, related to food. If you can get some organic soil from your local garden center, place it in a bowl or even in large storage tub, and you can place this in the base of the cage.

Again, get a different type of treat. So we could either use a little bit of dried herbs and even some good quality dried cat biscuits or dog kibble. Scatter that about in the soil and then what you can do is place it on the cage and it has to be great fun.

The rats can dig around in there and find all sorts of tasty treats, and that really gets them active and gets them thinking about it and it encourages natural behaviour. Last of all, the obvious thing is, rat hammocks. What I'm going to show you today is how to make a rat ladder.

First of all, you would want to get a large sheet, you ought to be able to find this in charity shops, car boot sales, so just get a large plain bed sheet, cut that into three strips and you will need a person to give you a hand to hold one end. So, what you just need to do is if one end is held nice and tightly, and what I've done is just turn the sheet into three strips, and then what I want to do is plait it. Make sure when you are plaiting it that you pull it quite tight and then what you can do once you've created a real nice length in there is just tie the ends off even with a bit of string or you could just tie the ends of this so.

And then, you can hang that up in the rat cage and the rats can be able to run along there and it creates a little bridge for them to their different homes. And that's how to create rat toys. .