Smelly rat problem

[Femshep]

I have been a proud mother to three beautiful lady rats for a few months now. They have a huge three story cage with wire floors.

My problem is I'm having a really hard time keeping the smell down. After one day DH starts complaining and it takes a lot of work to clean it every day. They have fleece on the wire floors to be gentler to their feet with seperate tissue bedding to make a nest with. I've been trying to.litter train them but they aren't interested .

Can anyone help me with any tips/routines to keep the smell away and keep the cage nice?

Tia

Not a rat mum, but I do have 2 guinea-pig boars (so experience with potentially whiffy rodents )

When I clean the cage, our older boar goes in and releases a huge puddle of wee. If he's just had a wee, he still managed to find a few extra drops (in his 'spare bladder' we think) to mark the enterance to the hay box.
Our little boar then runs through it

What are you cleaning the cage with? It might be something that in your quest to keep it clean, they are over ruling to make it smell like theirs again.
I find the best thing to clean is a handheld steam sprayer. Then even if they licked the floor, there's nothing toxic and no smell for them to over power.

I don't know about rats but with GPs the hay smells more.

Fleece wicks the moisture through (so stays surface dry) I used puppy pee pads under newspaper or a folded fleece when mine were indoors in winter - but I can rely on my pigs not to chew things. Not sure how chewy rats are?

I have two boars too and they smell so much better than my lady rats .

I haven't got a steamer but I may get one just for this purpose when I have the spare cash. Would be so much easier than what I'm currently doing.

It smells like people poo a lot of the time. Blurgh.

I would suggest just washing it with plain soap and water. Have you seen the doctor? You might have some kind of infection.

Rats aren't vegetarian are they ?
Is it something in their diet that makes them smell (just thinking how eye watering vile dog/cat pooh is compared to the recycled veg parcels that the GPs output)

Do you have rats neutered (no idea about rattus rattus I have kept mice and our two females were fine. Male mice are evil smelling )

When I had rats I had a cage with wire shelves which I covered with fleece and after a couple of days the pee stench was pretty rank! I took out all the shelves and replaced it all with (machine washable) ropes, wooden perches and these www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/70108912/

Basically I turned the cage into a massive huge assault course for my girls and cut out the places where wee could harbour :)

Rat mum here too. We have grey absorbant pellets for the bedding and litter that are from pets at home that is supposed to have outstanding odour control which seems pretty good but our boys still need cleaning every three days or so and cage washed (in shower for ease!) and spray disinfected otherwise they can start getting pretty smelly.

I used Megazorb when I first got the hogs ( equine bedding) but they didn't pee in it.

I use huge bags of a small animal safe cat litter (in a yellow plastic bag from The Range) it's a compressed wood pellet, when they pee it disintigrates to a damp 'sawdust' texture.
I don't use it as a direct bedding because if the area it would cover, but under newspaper ( especially in colder weather it insulates them and gives a padded floor feel) then I can scoop out any mucky bits.
But you could use that directly in their pee area?

Do they have a toilet each or share? They might be trying to outdo each others toilet smells?

use a mixture of compressed wood pellets and some stuff made from paper that does really well at odour control. I put paper down over the wires as thats easy to change and then provide fleece in the sleeping pods which can get washed easily.

Thanks for the advice all.

I couldn't use paper on the shelves, they'd make short work of that .

I just use diluted dish soap and water but after a day the smell is back. All rats are healthy, just smelly!

I have a male rat too 70 and he's the stinkiest little bugger in the world . I have a trug cage I made myself though and the smelk is well contained. Still needs cleaning every couple of days though.

Male mouse rather

I have mice too. Love them all.

My mouse was going to be given to a snake as live food .

He's such a sweet little thing but the smell, my god the smell.

I have 2 male rats.

We use back 2 nature bedding which is good at odour control.

We have covered wire shelves with Lino off cuts which just wipe clean. Removed wicker houses and replaced with plastic wipe clean accessories (Sputnik houses are lovely and easily cleaned). We have spare hammocks so we can wash regularly.

And we throw a bit of smelly bedding back in after a clean out to stop them scenting it all back up again.

They ain't never gonna smell of coco Chanel but it's definitely better with wipe clean stuff.

Ooh yes, I read something- keep a few scraps of soiled bedding/ droppings so the clean cage has their smell, scatter them in their toilet areas.

GP1 looks at me "Way-aye, she devil, your cleaning is a tad shoddy" when I do this

Interesting. My boys are smelly, my girls are not. In an emergency we have left them a week and a half without a thorough cage clean and they still haven't smelt.

Can you change the fleece every other day? Litter training is hit and miss. Our boys were trained, and then they decided not to be any more Our girls aren't but they have their preferred spots which makes it easier to deal with!

What is their diet like? What fresh food do they get? We've discovered that carrots give them horrendously smelly (and sloppy) poos. Do you have them eating pellets or a muesli? Do you make your own? We've been experimenting with the Shunamite diet a lot and we seem to have found a decent mix now. Lots of nice smelling herbs thrown in now too :)

70 rats aren't veggies, but not being veggie does help with the smell I think!

We use this disinfectant:
www.ratrations.com/safe4-disinfectant-ready-to-use-odourless-p-1086.html
It works really well, you can buy it concentrated as well if you have spray bottles. Due to our lot seemingly being allergic to every sodding substrate bar carefresh (which is stupidly expensive) we've actually started using newspaper on the base of the cage as they'd just get under the fleece, that seems to be working really well actually, and the smell is more manageable.