Fancy Rats Forum

I scatter my rats food in the substrate, but i am looking for other homemade enrichment ideas.
what are good things to hide food in and let them work for it a bit? i like things they can destroy and things that can be hung in the cafe with food in it.
any good ideas for homemade enrichment toys ?

update: Karel sometimes sleeps with (one of) the 2 younger boys in a hammock, but most of the time he sleeps with his brother, or alone. to us he is a very affective rat and very calm. I don't like neutering, simply because i do not like to operate a healthy animal. can i let this go on like this? h...

years ago i had a group of rats, and i have fed them on a home made scuttling gourmet diet with DE1 and Calcivet and fresh veggies. later on i changed this to DailyRat3 and no other supplements. they have also been on a diet with a commercial food base. i did not notice any difference in their healt...

update: everything was going ok, step by step i added some more flat hammocks and open houses. once i added a closed house with only one opening, the chasing started again. so i do not use this anymore. until then they lived in the upper part of the little zoo venturer cage. because everything went ...

yesterday i added a flat hammock and everything seems fine. they are sleeping in mixed groups, but not often all together. nu bullying, no chasing around, they are all ok with eachother. i just added a second flat hammock, still in 1/4th of the little zoo venturer cage. they are fine with it and the...

i added the flat hammock last saturday and they were sleeping in it all together. this morning i moved them to the empty 1/4th venturer cage, see how that goes....

Yes it is possible to use a flat hammock in the duna cage. Can i add this today?
And then when i move them to the bigger cage (1/4 zoo venturer) should i start with an empty cage? And when that goed well, add a hammock?

I started the carrier method on thursday, from 7 am till 1 pm they where in the carrier. form 1 pm thursday i moved them to the duna cage. at first they where sleeping in pairs, or Kees was sleeping apart from the others. since yesterday noon i have seen them sleeping in mixed pairs and all on one p...

another question: do you think they can settle this on their own and grow out of it? (assuming the behaviour is not getting worse)
and: would it help to add a adult male to the group i am having now? or would this only upset them?

After my last post everything went well for a couple days, now he is back to the bad behaviour again. He does not hurt the others,just chases them around. Sometimes they do sleep together. During the day eveything is fine, but in the evening he starts chasing the other 3 around again from time to ti...

update: i took them out of the carrier after a few hours sleeping all together.
cleaned and cage and decorate it without any houses or double hammocks, and since then they are good together!
hope it stays this way!

i hope neutering is not needed and i hope that he will calm down in time. they are al sleeping together in the carrier now. it is not that they do not like eachother. it is just Karel beeing a bully. also he has been the most active rat in this group, often awake and sitting by the cage door for mor...

this morning Karel was chasing one of the younger boys around the cage. the young boy was screaming and running around frantic. i put all of them in the carrier this morning. the carrier is 36 x 26 x 23 cm for how long should i leave them in it? and after that, should i switch to the mini duna hamst...

the toilet high up the platform next to the facorit sleeping spot seems to help!

Hi guys, I have 4 rats, 2 boys 3 months old, 2 boys 5 months old. One of the 5 month old boys,Karel, is showing puberty problems. He chases the other 3 around from time to time and they seem to be realy afraid when he does this. They run and scream for their lives.. He also corners them. his brother...