Here are some tips for you to take care and be aware of your rattie...
The first thing you need to know when you get home with your new rat is it's home.
The home for the rat is very important when it comes to safety and comfort. Here are some tips and suggestions that I would give to people with rats.
#1. A good cage for a rat is a bird cage. They love them!! They love to climb the sides of it and sit on the perches. Also a good advantage of a cage is you can hang stuff like toys and hammacks off of the sides. (NOTE: Just make sure that if you have a big cage and you want it to be more than one story, make sure the bottom of the cage or the decks are not wire! They can hurt their feet!)
#2. Another good home for a rat is an aquarium. Now, when you first get a rat it is small....Now you know it is going to grow quite large!
Don't expect them to fit in a ten gallon tank. What I suggest is if you have 1 rat the least size you could put them in is a 20 gallon. Remember THE BIGGER THE BETTER!!
Another important thing is their bedding!!
The numer one thing for a rat NOT to use is CEDAR nor PINE!!!
IT is very toxic to rats because it has what's called phenols in it.
Another bedding not to use is stuff that looks like corn. It gives them nosebleeds. We have our bedding specail made so ours will not get sick at all. I suggest not to buy any bedding from any supermarkets because last time we got ours from one it has mites all in it. That is not good at all. If mites arrive you can go to to petshop an get a bird mite protector. MAKE SURE THAT YOUR RATTIES CANNOT GET A HOLD OF IT THOUGH BECAUSE IT MIGHT BE TOXIC IF THE EAT IT OR GET IT IN THEIR EYES, ECT. SO PUT IT IN A PLACE WHERE YOU KNOW THEY AREN'T GOING TO GET A HOLD OF IT. A good kind of bedding is popler. It has no chemicals or smell to it. It's just hard wood. It is very good for rats and they don't get any nosebleeds. Also a bedding that is like popler is cherri.
You should change your rat's bedding every week or so. We change ours every tuesday, but also we only have one rat in each cage. If you have more than two rats in each cage, I suggest that you clean and put new, fresh bedding in twice a week.
Another thing that rats absolutely love is food.
Now, you need to make sure that your rat has a good, healthy diet.I go to Wal-mart and get hamster food and they love it. Is is a healthy food to give to them.Something else that is VERY healthy for them is rat blocks and prepackaged food by Kaytee. But this sometimes can be expensive if not making in bulk. Remember, rats can also eat people food. Some of the food our rats like is toast with a LITTLE bit of jelly on it. Just enough so they can taste the jelly. They also LOVE icecream cones and dry cereal. You can just about feed them anything, but make sure you stay away from thick, sticky stuff like peanut butter. Their nostrils are so small that it can get stuck in them and sufficate them. This is a regular meal for my rats: A little bit of hamster food, dried cereal, and the a little bit of people food.
Here are some ideas for rat toys
My rats love to play in empty oatmeal tubes. All you have to do is finsish one and then cut the bottom out and take the lid off. Stick it in their cage and they'll go crazy with it! They also like to sleep in them. Another thing my rats like to sleep in is an old hat. I found one and I hung it to the side of the cage and clipped it with a clothespin. It is like a hammack. It is very good for the winter. It keeps them warm. Rats love things that they can hide in too. Some of the things that you can put in there for that reason is a shoe box or any type of box. They love it.
The following things are the symptoms of a sick rat
#1. Some rats sneeze blood a lot. This you can go to a pet store and put a pill like substance called Penacillen in their water and sometimes it will cure it and sometimes it won't. It depends how sick the rat is. It is usually used for colds. BUT REMEMBER, IF YOU USE PENICILLEN IT'S ONE PILL PER GALLON OF WATER. One result to this might be the bedding that you are using!
#2. Another way you can see if a rat is really sick is they get this thing were their head tilts and it gets stuck that way for a while.
All together if your rat is just very weak and is loosing weight because of not eating, I would contact a vet or if you can't afford it I would have them put down. I know it is very sad, but it is better if it
doesn't suffer.
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