I give my rats fruit veg and other human food as treats it’s good for them they are healthy and tend to live longer life’s. That’s my experience anyway also have the bird hide you got my pigmy rat boys like it.
I agree about that little carrier - perfect transport for 2 to 4. Also, the two types of shelves that easily screw mount onto the cage bars. Wonderful! Super for their teeth and nails, not to mention great exercise. I disagree about any edibles from pet stores, however. (“treats”, huts, yogurt drops, etc.) My experience has proven to me that pet rats need & fare best with natural treats - Anything healthy for ratties from your plate, fridge or pantry. We get to love & enjoy them such a short time… Why not let it be a little longer and healthier if possible? I now have had a number live over 2 years and three over 3 years without any serious health problems for the majority of their lives. I pray the same for anyone who reads these words ... Happy, healthy, long-living and loving fancy rats for you❣️ Keep reading and learning about what gives them the best quality of life in all regards. Best wishes from Michele & Girls 🐀🐁🐀🐁Calli, Lily, Joy & Lexi
Most of my treats are not pet store or specifically rat made ones, I'm well aware they contain loads of crap in them and aren't good treats to use on a regular basis. If you watch my trick videos you can see I stick to cheerios and other such treats, in fact this is the first time I've bought real pet store treats in a year or so. In terms of lifespan my rats seem to live on a average a bit more than 2 (which is when health issues seem to kick in as well :/ ), I'd love to have them live over 3 or more though and as Cookie, Cream, and Marshmallow are now a few months over 1.5 years old I hope to have many more months (or even years) with them!
Shadow The Rat Hello again. I did not mean to offend by commenting on those preservative laden pet store treats. I know you don’t use or promote them much, choosing organic Cheerios rather than Gerber puffs, for example. I was commenting from my heart and experience, doing my best over these past several years to help more of my girls live longer without masses, tumors and other issues. I believe the activity levels of your rats is one of the healthiest things for them! Kudos to you for that and much, much more. It’s been wonderful to see your channel grow. So well deserved 👍❤️🐀🐁💞
My rats love the rice sticks, but they dye their poop! I found green and blue poop in the cage and it freaked me out! It's from the food dye in those puffed rice sticks.
Actually just set up a big enclosure for my two hairless girls. Going to go check out the pet stores and get them some more toys today. Would love for you to check out my last video on their enclosure and offer any suggestions.
I’m so freaking excited because I’m getting ratites after Thanksgiving! We used to have four rats but they all passed away. Where did you get your rats?
I came across your channel a few days ago. I have baby Fancy rat named Petunia last week. We have become very close in a short amount of time. Of course I am a new rat mother so for me this was amazing. Your videos are very informative and I love how dedicated you are with all your beautiful rats. Petunia is about 4-5 weeks still a baby and her father is a Rex and her mother is a Fancy rat. Petunia looks like a miniature Latte but with wavy fur and curly whiskers. Anyway much love x
Alyce Eaton Congratulations, new rat mother! Please be sure to get Miss Petunia a friend, a sister of similar age, as soon as possible💞🐀🐁You will learn a great deal about this as you watch more videos on this, Esther’s channel and others. You can also go to www.dapper.com.au/ for a wealth of information and helpful rat world links. Phenomenal online ratty newsletter subscription available at itsaratsworld.com And finally, this website will help you and any small animal vet understand better what our little friends need 😍🙏😌 ratguide.com/
Warming with those ledges; I have those and the screws inside the ledge slip out very easily. After about two months of use I heard a small crash and just saw my rat hiding and the ledge on the ground with the screw still attached. It isn’t amazingly stable either after some time. I use hot glue and fixed them and I feel much better now that I’ve reenforced them, they wobble less and aren’t as loose and I can keep them without support underneath.
I've had good luck with mine so far, some I've had for a few years and they've been surprisingly sturdy. That being said I have hot glue a few that came loose or broken, although they all came from amazon so I suspect they don't do well with the rough and tumble of being transported.
Shadow The Rat oh I meant specifically that brand, I haven’t used the Kaytee lava ledges yet. the those ledges from petsmart started shedding powder and fell off quick.
I use a cat carrier when I clean my girls’ cage cuz free roaming during cleaning ended with my girls on the highest shelf of my closet so not doing that again. I had to thread a bunch of pipe cleaners through the bar spacing in the door of the cat carrier. I would be fine with them free roaming during cleaning if I didn’t have fancy interview clothing in my closet.
kiki and liv yeah I could have done that. Now I’m going to put them in a smaller cage while I clean. My worry is they could get out while I’m not looking. Rats are smart as heck
Shadow I’m having trouble with my rats. My rats have a very hard time with training. They never want to do their basics cause I want to see them do it. Heather is a more skittish and shy rat like your Cream, and she won’t even go though the hoop. Other than training, the rats get kind of bored of playtime and training. Also I am trying to form a stronger bond with Heather. But it not working. They won’t go for the wet treat. Can you help me with all these problems? Thank you!!!
Unfortunately the only advise I can really give is to try and take a step back and go at their own pace. Sometimes its hard to do so when you see other rats seemingly succeeding first try, in fact this was a huge issue for me after training my rat Shadow because she picked everything up within just a few minutes. After Shadow training other rats felt so much harder, what took minutes would take them several days or over a week depending on the trick and it was hard to take a step back and realize they learned differently or needed me to break things up more for them to succeed. There's a saying in training, "be a splitter, not a lumper", and it basically means break up every behaviors into small pieces when teaching it. I find it naturally fairly hard to do this because its easy to see only the end result. But once you focus on just pieces of the trick and gradually build up, training becomes much more fun for you and the animals. For example with Marshmallow he wouldn't even follow a lure when I got him, it frustrated me because he was obviously interested in food but he gave up after I tried to lure him in just half a circle. So I had to break it up even more, using liquid treats to establish a good lure behavior first and then rewarding after 1/4 circles for the longest time. My video of him learning to spin *looks* like it took place in one night but actually took him well over a week, however since no one wants to watch 30+ minutes of me repeating and modifying the behaviors I only show the bits where he moves on to the next level and so it looks like he mastered it right away. In any case though you can see he got it in the end, and sometimes you just have to go slow like that to get good results. As far as going through a hoop I suggest you work on following a food lure first, rewarding after just a step and then building up. Once they'll take at least 5 steps before needing a treat then you can introduce objects like the hoop, and if Heather for example is scared of the hoop then focus on leading her around it and rewarding heavily until she's willing to stick her head inside, then build that up to her going through it. If your looking for a good liquid treat meat baby food tends to be my rats favorites, I try to limit it but when first starting out it can be a great motivator. I suggest introducing it in the cage a few times first though so they can really develop a taste for it and only once they go crazy for it using it as a training treat. Good luck!
@@ShadowTheRat Thank you so Much!!! I will try to go at a slower pace. If fact i'll watch and see what Riley does. She lerans easier. With her bascis I will make sure she knows everything and if she does it correctly I will give her the hearder stuff. With Heater I will slowly help get used to objects she is not used to. Thank you so much for the advice. You are still my favite youtuber I watch everyday.
I just got my little girls today, they're newly weaned so they are very tiny. They don't seem to want to climb on anything, not even to go down to the bottom floor of the critter nation. Also they're having trouble figuring out how to use the drip bottle. They keep licking the little ball but don't push it in. One of them figured it out by accident when she got mad and started biting the spout. Any suggestions?
CongRATs on your new babies! If they're newly weaned they really shouldn't be away from their mom yet, good breeders typically keep them until 6 weeks minimum (rats become sexually mature at 5 weeks but many breeders place the males with their dad to learn how to behave and keep the females with their mom for an extra week). If they're from a feeder bin I understand (my own feeder girls came to me at weaning as well, only way to make sure they aren't pregnant unfortunately), but if they're breeder rats that seems very strange. The most important thing right now would be to make sure they can both eat and drink. With such young babies all but the easiest to depress water bottles can be hazardous as they might not be strong enough to push the ball in. My water bottles are meant for hamsters and mice so in my case I knew the babies would be able to drink, even so they didn't know how to so I held the bottle up to them and slowly depressed it, leaving a drop on it to start them drinking and then helping again as necessary. They picked it up pretty quickly so I was confident with leaving just the bottles with them. However if your bottles aren't as easy to get water from, I highly suggest giving the rats a shallow bowl as well. I've spoken to people who have had 4-5 week old rats die from dehydration because they didn't notice that they couldn't get water, and as such its always recommended to have a shallow bowl with water. Again in my case I actually saw them drinking so I knew they were okay, but if you aren't sure its always better to give them a shallow bowl just in case. Another thing you can try is to spread some meat baby food or honey on the bottle spout, just a tad bit to hopefully attract them to licking it. I've done this in the past with older rats however with my feeder babies they were so suspicious of new foods that these scents actually threw them off licking so check if they'll eat any liquid treats before trying it. In terms of food make sure they're eating it as well, in my case my girls were used to mazuri but lucky switched to Oxbow essentials no problem, it took them about a week of me offering other foods off my fingers for them to actually try more than a lick but the Oxbow they ate from day 1. You can leave out some wet food to help them adjust (it also makes a great taming treat!), in my case I gave my girls a baby food lid full of meat baby food along with some ensure in a shallow bowl. In terms of climbing around the cage they're probably just scared and still adjusting, it might take them a few days to fully investigate everything (depending on their temperament) so for now I'd leave food and water on every level. I'm not sure if your talking about the double critter nation or single one however if its a double make sure you have lots of toys and such to prevent any falls, babies (and rats in general) can be surprisingly clumsy and falls can be dangerous. Again congRATulations on your new ratties!
@@ShadowTheRat I've noticed one of them has figured out how to press the ball in and get water and she seems to be getting the hang of it, but her sister who is a lot more shy and hasn't really done much exploring without her sister around, is still having some trouble. I put some water in a shallow bowl but Artemis (her sister) pushed Callisto in and she wouldn't go near it after that. I got them from a local pet shop who said the man who brought them is a semi-regular and "good at handling his rats and taming them young" so they might be about 4-5 weeks. I'm keeping an eye on them to make sure they're getting water and food. They fit in the palm of my hand so I noticed some of the toys are a little big for them and they have trouble climbing them. Artemis has tried a few times but I think she gets intimidated by how big some of the stuff is. We've made a couple of adjustments to make things a little easier for them but I'm still worried they might hurt themselves. My cage is only a single but I have a bin shelf set in the third hole from the bottom. It's pretty high up and the ladder it comes with didn't reach that high so I bought a wooden bird bridge for them to climb and we put a safety ledge in but I think they're scared to take the first step from the shelf onto the first rung.
I've had them for about two and a half days now and last night I started petting them a little and trying to give them treats. I moved them down to the bottom floor so they have more space but they still haven't explored much. They aren't doing much climbing either and I left a bowl of water for them while I go to work just to be sure. I haven't seen either of them try and drink out of it and it's still pretty full when I get home. I still see them trying the drip bottles occasionally and they're able to get water it just takes them a few tries. I also bought some meat flavored baby food and tried to give them some on a spoon for a little extra protein but they wouldn't take it. Is it because they're still really young and are just really skittish and jumpy? Is there anything I can do to get them to relax a little more around me besides talking quietly and trying to give them treats? Because so far they won't take anything from me.
Hey shadow, hope you’re well! Not sure if you know this but petco and petsmart aren’t exactly animal lovers. They are such a big franchise that they don’t care where they get their live pets from... I’m telling you, it’s disgusting and sick. Especially how they treat small animals.. I know someone like you would be disgusted. I know that you’re buying items and not live animals, but it’s not great to support a company that would stoop so low just to make more money.:: if I can make a suggestion, I’ve seen you have ordered items online right? There are certain very reputable apps and websites that sell rat toys, cages, food, stuff etc at incredibly cheap prices!! They even have certain promotional items that are completely free and you only pay for the shipping! I can vouch myself for two specific apps/sites; Wish, (which is my fave), aliexpress, Tophatter, overstock, are a few I myself have ordered from and they are amazing!! Check it out :) you’ll save money and won’t be giving your hard earned dollars to companies who couldn’t care less for the well being of animals. By the way i am really not one of those fanatics either... these are just two chains that have disgusted me so much I can’t hear their names without feeling sick Beside that, you are so awesome for always spoiling your ratties! These things are not cheap!
