Bringing your rat home

When you first bring your rats’ home you will need to give them time to adjust to their new surroundings and to settle in.

Make sure they have fresh food and water in their cage and some type of place to hide. (Such as an igloo, tube, or even a small cardboard box)

After an hour or so, you may start to speak softly to your rats. Try and keep their room quiet and calm, loud noises will frighten them. Don’t poke your fingers through the cage bars, this will frighten them and they are likely to bite you.

For the first 24hrs, do not force your rats to come out of the cage.

Cages

There are a variety of cages on the market ranging from roughly £80 upwards. We would advise that it is preferable to buy a cage which is spacious for the number of rats you have, has room for them to climb, has room for some toys/houses etc., rather than buy the biggest cage you can find and seldom let your rats out of the cage. The best cages for your rats are ones with a plastic base, others have wire floors but these can hurt your rats’ feet.

Your cage should be large enough to have specific areas.

-    Sleeping area – hammocks, igloos, etc.

-   Eating area – gravity water bottles are probably best, fairly sturdy bowls for food to ensure they are not easily knocked over.

-   Toilet area – you can buy litter trays, these can be put where your rats choose to toilet (usually corners)

-    Playing area – rats love hanging toys, tubes, ladders, climbing space etc.

Rats love to come out of their cages and be able to ‘Free-Range’ around the room. A word of warning, though, rats can get in to places you would never imagine, climb to often dizzying heights, jump to as far as 4ft off the ground, and chew things at an amazing speed. Therefore some time should be taken to ‘Rat Proof’ any room to be used for ‘Free Range’. Some initial steps would be to ensure cables are not lying where they can be chewed, ensure nothing is lying around which can cause harm to your rats if chewed, perhaps move anything particularly valuable or special to you out of the way or to another room.