Would any rat owners mind answering a couple of questions for me?

[RoseMortmain]

Dd wants rats. She recently lost her hamster and is missing looking after an animal. I'm coming round to the idea but need to check a couple of things.

The hamster cage was a Savic Hamster Heaven which is 80cm x 50cm x 50cm, would that be big enough for a pair of rats? It has various platforms and tunnels - could we leave them on for the rats?

I was anticipating getting a pair of boys, I've read they're slower and happier to sit on shoulders/ laps. Is that right? Would boys be better for a novice 9yo owner?

Does the breed make a difference to temperament? I was looking at Russian Blue, would that be okay or are there better breeds?

A friend has sent me a link to a litter of blues on Preloved. Is it okay to get them from an ad like that or is a registered NFRS breeder better?

All answers gratefully received!

Corus ours do a little stamping dance with their back legs when they want to go.
Our younger pig walks backwards as his sign .Like he's going to tuck his bottom in and weeeeeeeee.

One of our female mice had a tumour -she got herself stuck in a cardboard tube (I think they had looroll tubes which were fine but got given a smaller one that was a stiffer card) We had to grab her tail at the rump and hoist her out there was much indignancy and tail swishing .

They are sweet, GP1 can sit for ages on DD bed and only pee when he goes in the box or his Pighouse.
You can't train them, but if they do pee (which is rare) we just say "Oh you little mink" and pop them in their box (no telling them off, they wouldn't understand) but if they pee in the box , they get cuddles after.

Totally marking my place. I'm seriously considering getting rats for the DDs.

Rats seem to have so much more personality than hamsters.

Loving the cues of the GP. We have two in the school I work in and they regularly pee on the children and sofas.

I was considering rats for my DS but as he showed bu**er all interest in his guine-pig, I'm glad I didn't .

His guinea wasn't neglected at all - he was fed, cleaned and cuddled when our other pig was. After a very short time I decided you know what, I'm having him

I fear a rat cage if he kept it in his room would've got neglected and TBH, they are the sort of animals that need the interaction.(They;d have to be in the family room)

(Actually one of a guineas plus points is they aren't that smart )

corus My girls do that more than my boys do strangely, but one of my boys always does it on my trousers in the crotch region. Every single time he is out Urine marking isn't too obvious though, it's minimal, literally drops of wee rather than puddles of it. We tend to use the same three jumpers and have found that they don't mark them as much, probably because they recognise the smell of it, which is why I think that Howl marks my trousers, because I change them daily but not the jumper.

Female rats have a 62% chance of getting mammory tumours according to some studies. You can get them spayed young to dramatically cut that risk. We would spay any baby females we got in future unless we were breeding, but it's a very personal decision and one that you should talk over with your vet to make your own decision on it. For us it would have the benefit of having the mischeif all in one cage, which we're keen on. Having two cages is a pita at the moment!

Boys don't smell too bad, the cage gets stinky by the end of the week but it's not awful. Our boys have quite a musky smell to them and can get a bit smellier poos when eating fresh carrot, not sure why by we couldn't work it out until I found a tip online about carrot!

Their tails are lovely, our boys stick theirs out of the cage and we'll sit playing with them for ages.

RE cages, I'd recommend looking at metal base ones for girls, they're generally bigger and a bit more expensive but it stops the little sods chewing through the cage Our girls have chewed holes through two plastic bases! They didn't go any where though We noticed two holes in the corners next to the wall, patched them up with baking trays and cardboard for the night (at stupid-o-clock in the evening), went to bed and woke up in the morning to a brand new ratty sized hole in a third corner. Put them in their old cage and they put another hole in it within a day.

Haha, our boys sleep with their balls hanging out between the bars of the cage, it's hilarious!

You also need to look at cages with narrow bar spacing, less than 2cm. Girls can get out of anything bigger. A smaller cage will do for now but I wouldn't leave it too long before replacing it. Keep the old cage as well though, smeller cages are handy for travelling with them for a few days or so.

Oh, that's another thing, try to have them in a high-traffic area if you get them OP. Our girls completely came out of their shell when we moved them into our main room with our boys, they love watching people and hearing their voices. I didn't realise just how much it mattered until we moved the girls through (their were in our bedroom for two weeks for quarantining purposes, my god we were lucky to have a massive bag of ear plugs, noisy feckers!)

Ridiculously high number isn't it? I'll need to try find the main one as it was an interesting one to read. But even then, other studies suggest a high enough number. But then it's like any statistics really.

Also thinking of it, be wary of screens round rats. Mine love to mark my phone and tablet

We've rearranged the room so that mine and DPs desks are touching and the boys are running across the tops of both like "WTF is going on?" And helping me type

They love keyboards. Haku was just running across mine, I have a key on mine that turns my PC on/off which he knows, he was dancing across it a moment ago.

I love that yours accessed BIOS and changed settings though, that's brilliant!

Howl loves tea, if there is a mug on the desk he'll go for it, loves it.

Hahaha, that's brilliant. High class ratty

Rats are lovely, we used to keep them but unfortunately DH and DS became allergic to them, so couldn't keep them anymore. They can get very big about 700g, though that may have been the food they used to stuff down, they do like the same sort of things as us.

We did have a lovely Rex breed rat which had curly hair and whiskers, he very friendly and was not quite as big but he was very tame. He was the best rat we ever had, he did go a bit bald in the end but was so sweet.

We kept ours in a large plastic based cage, and they seemed happy in them

:) We all have our favourites. Howl is mine and DPs favourite, we adore the other three too but Howl is still such a big cutie, loves a cuddle, loves playing and is adorable even with his one eye.

I had a gorgeous hooded boy rat many years ago. I called him Mortimer and he came everywhere with me. He was free range, very intelligent and affectionate. I loved him. I would highly recommend rats as pets. Beautiful animals but I'd like to issue a word of warning with regards to what you use as bedding. In my ignorance I used to use newspaper for their bedding and my poor rats would get sick, develop sores on their ears and tails, lose weight and their tails would go hard and drop of. I would take them to the vets, they'd give creams, injections, all sorts, but they'd get worse and we'd have them put down. It was only after losing two rats and the third becoming ill that it dawned on me that the print from the newspaper was toxic and was slowly poisoning them. As soon as I removed the paper from the third rats cage he got better and lived on for another 18mths.

It was sad how no one picked up on this, even the vet so I wanted to warn anyone who gives their rat newspaper to tear up for bedding. It's highly toxic. Stick to tissue paper.

Interesting about the newspaper - is that because they shred it?

I give the guineas newspaper, no problems but they don't do anything with it except pee.

I guess if they're shredding then the ink would get on their paws, mouths, in their digestive system ?

Newspaper is supposed to be ink safe for pets though?!

We use it in our cages as Howl and Haku are very prone to URIs and carefresh was the only thing that didn't cause a reaction. Thanks for the heads up though. I'll look into that and see if I can find what it is.

This was going back around 15yrs now so perhaps they have changed the ink formulations. My ratties used to love shredding it with their teeth and making a bed out of it so yes they were ingesting it. It was such a horrible thing to happen, i still feel guilty that I didnt realise sooner.