Free Range areas

[CheeseBairn]

My rattie playground

[acapae_wolf]

Previously my rats have free ranged in a bathroom with a cork tile floor.

When I have babies or otherwise new rats I section off the area nearest the door for increased containment (the gap is where I sit).


The rest of the bathroom is a silly long thing L-shape and hard to photograph

[acapae_wolf]

Currently my rats free range on the landing. It's quite boring though and I can now definately see why people who have limited space for free range often complain that their rats just go to sleep. There's nowhere naughty to climb or anywhere really to investigate.





Laptop is so I spend longer with them out; I sit/ lie somewhere in the middle section.

Soon I hope to be able to give them access to the bathroom (brown door on the right) too. After the shower is installed and the hole behind the sink fixed anyway. Hopefully at a sooner point in time they'll also have access to the stairs up to my bedroom (brown door over the step). The stairs are inside my bedroom though, so I need to make a barrier out of my spare sheet of correx to (hopefully) stop them from accessing the entire room...

[Hanlou]

Although my rats have a mostly-pet-proofed-room to free range in they started doing a lot of damage and as the house is on the market I bought a rabbit run for them to have unsupervised free range in.

It's a 6x2x4ft rabbit run from (( The Rabbit Hutch Shop )). Am really pleased with it and the rats seem to like it.

This was an initial set-up - hope to add more stuff to it as time goes on.

[malude]

If I have the time to supervise the whole session then they get the hallway, stairs and landing with various toys/climbing things/tunnels scattered about...

[acapae_wolf]

Mine now free range in my bedroom. These are various views of the 'set up' bit:







Please ignore my desk! That's a pile of things I don't want the rats to access. I need some drawers...

[Nina]

Its not safe to let my boys run on the floor so they have their own playground. This is a couple of them, the blue tray has a bowl of water for when they are out.

[Amzy]

This is my playpen (well.. mine and raz's lol). They get a different range of toys each time they are let out so it is varied.

They get brought through in my carriers. Raz's cages are in the front room so the pen attaches to her cages which makes free range slightly easier.

[Yamazumi]

Finally got a big room I can ratproof (ish). However, I have no way of stopping the boys climbing on the girls cage and the girls climbing on the boys, but they don't seemed particularly interested in each other now they've gotten used to the idea.

Only wires that are out are down the side of the bed so they can't get to them... although being rats they don't care they have the whole room to run around and things to climb and insist on jumping on the bed. Since they'll only be out when I'm here it's not too much of a problem cos I can just pop them back on the floor, but it's nice that I don't have to watch them constantly. I can listen out for chewing on things they shouldn't be, but I don't have to be on guard constantly, like I would if they could get to wires.







Hammock attached to the underside of their Aventura.



Correx around my rubbish Uni bed to stop them getting underneath it (the big bit is covering a giant hole in the material)




I'm going to get some lino to put under their cage to make sweeping easier, and so that I can put down digging trays and pea fishing trays without them making a mess.


I'm hoping the babies don't take to eating the walls in this room as I still have to fix my last room up!

[wendysr44]

My rats free range area in the hallway

[rach c]

My girls free range in the hallway, they usually have more tubes and either a compost digging box or pea fishing.

[fuschia]

Here's my bedroom - the main ratty play area:

[Jenni2317]

This is my new free range, I used to let them free range in dining/ conservatory but with the new boys and the rats getting behind freezer and stuff I decided it was safer with a more enclosed area, I am going to enlarge this enclosure though.

[cyber ratty]

I have a number of large scale toys in my rat room which get spread out for free range time.

Several years ago, when I had more spare space, there was a semi-permanent free range corner:


Another layout:



An example of a current playground (most of it gets stored below the cages):

[Jemma]

Due an update to this with a few free range options I’ve used over the years;


The current rat room free range area
This integrates the cage into the free range properly, meaning the outside of the cage becomes a climbing frame. As my cage is a triple its needed some adaptions to make this set up as fall safe as I can achieve whilst being practical. They have a series of steps down the side which they can use to descend to the carrier and hence get back down again. I also put a few cushions under the cage if I’m not available to rescue / catch anyone as a soft fall.



The cat tree adapted to help even oldies get back up


The rats ball pool and some of the play table


A zoomed out of the table play area


Another surface they can get up to and play on, with a little mini cage which is used for feeding anyone extras or being a water bottle source as needed