Fancy Rats Forum

I have 4 rats, and have had lots of rats in the past.
all of my rats were kinda potty trained. they went to the litter tray when they needed to pee or poo. sometimes some pee on the shelves, but that can be wiped away.
i have had my rats on fleece in the past with litter trays, now i have them on a paperbased litter, on the whole cage floor.

the first 2 of this group of 4 were potty trained from the beginning. the other 2..... well at least one of them does everything in the hammocks or the hanging house, just where ever he is, he goes.
i put papertowel in the house and hammocks, so it can be changed twice a day. i cange the hammocks whenever they start to smell, sometimes after 3 days, sometimes once a week.

i have now put a shelve in high up, with a litter tray on it, hoping it will help.... what else can i do to get the dirty boy potty trained?
he does not seem to be learing from the other boys.

Providing easy access to toilets is the best thing you can do, and don't clean them too thoroughly, they need to smell of poo from the rats' pov to encourage them to carry on using it.

I'm lucky in that my mums all train their litters to use toilet corners, so mine are pretty good!

cyber ratty wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:47 am

Providing easy access to toilets is the best thing you can do, and don't clean them too thoroughly, they need to smell of poo from the rats' pov to encourage them to carry on using it.

Yep, I've always made sure the upstairs litter tray is right next to the bed. Like all they have to do is step out of bed and they're standing in the litter tray. It's still no guarantee that they won't just toilet in bed — some rats are just that lazy — but the shorter the distance to the toilet, the more likely they are to use it instead of just marinating in bed instead.

If there are multiple places that your lazy rats like to spend time, you may need multiple litter trays to go with them, one by each bed.

I'm following this with interest.

My older boys are bloody fantastic at using the litter trays, will even pee in there. The younger boys, not so much. There'll majority use them, but will just poop in the hammocks if they're sleepy and will pee vaguely near by rather then in them

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