Training Natals

I am inspired by MouseAgility
Videos of mice and natal rats doing tricks such as fetch and twist. VERY cute! Lucky will be my little pupil since he's much more calm than Cupid right now. How I miss my fuzz butts ♥

Official Mouse Agility Site

Videos of Lucky and Cupid

Pretty short and poor quality (taken on iphone) but it's something :)

OH!

Don't think I ever mentioned...we put smaller wire mesh around the whole rat cage maybe a week ago. Worked out REALLY well. There are a few spots that may still need to be covered for babies but we aren't too worried right now. That was a pain on our fingers! OUCH! No escape attempts because escapes can no longer be made and we did a good job with pointing the wires out and smoothing them so no cut rattie feet. Happy we did it finally....but not looking forward o finishing off the other little bits here and there.

Whatever it takes to have safe caged rats.

Plans...plots...

Thinking about adding a wheel to the rat cage. I think they would enjoy it. I have to be careful though. I've read about tails getting stuck in spokes so I cant just grab any wheel. I also want to string up some bird toys, minus the bells...all I need is to hear bells at 4 am haha

I also need to figure out a good fortune cookie recipe to bake sheets of training treats. They fight over the bits and pieces I hand them and they come running when they think they will get some.

Hamster ball fun?

All snuggled up!

Well...after much mess I think they've got the hamster ball down. At least Lucky does but he's bigger so he's in charge of where it goes.

Because they were afraid of the newness of this ball, they of course did poo and pee while in there. I had to clean the ball up multiple times and pick up what fell out the ball. I also had to wipe the little rats down with a wet towel. They did NOT like that at ALL. I'm guessing they don't like water.

I put them in the ball today while I cleaned out their cage and no huge mess! Lucky and Cupid are getting used to the ball rather quickly. Hopefully they get to the point where I wont have to follow them around with a napkin and a towel haha!

Updated Pic of Lucky and Cupid

Most recent picture I took of Cupid and Lucky. Cupid got BIG! Compare to how small she was next to Lucky in this picture. She is much more easy to handle now. She wants to climb up onto you and explore.

I put them in the bigger rat cage last night and kept an eye on them. Cupid almost escaped again! There is a certain spot where the bars are a bit more open. Good thing I was watching. So until we mesh up the cage they need to stay in the smaller container. To keep them from getting super bored, I got them a big hamster ball they can both play in. Now they can be "loose", explore and exercise without me worrying about escapes.

All in all they are doing well. Curious and cuddly.

Before you assume these rats are hellions....

Many people say they are very aggressive. Consider what age they may have been purchased or what they are being kept for. These rats are bred mainly for snake food. No one plays with them. If you buy an older rat, the aggression will most likely still be set in its little head, making it harder to work with. It isnt used to being petted or picked up.

It's best to buy a few of them when they are still fairly young (but able to eat solids) They will be jumpy as all hell (people have called this area of time the "popcorn stage") but they will be less likely to bite you meaning you will be more likely to work with them. And please buy more than one. They are infinitely more calm when you have at least two.

An other perk of buying them young is you can have them for more time. I've read the average lifespan runs at about 3 years. I want to have mine around me for as long as I can.

In my opinion these make great pets. Small, easy to care for, not smelly, super cute...You just need to put time into them but then again...don't ALL pets require some kind of work and time? ☺

To mesh or not to mesh...

Thinking about wrapping the big rat cage in a mesh that has smaller holes to keep the future baby rats from escaping. I could just move them all into the smaller cage as they get to a certain size but that could just get annoying if these things have babies like I've read. Just not sure how I'd set it up or how much it would even cost.

I guess I'll figure that all out next time I see the cage.

Until I can update you on MY rats status, here's a natal rat doing some tricks for you!

Message Board and Video

I don't plan on posting to this as it seems like it moves VERY slow BUT I read a lot of the posts and it's given me some good ideas and information.


Video of some soft furred rats and their babies. Very encouraging because even with babies they are not nippy. I've read they can be VERY protective of babies but I'm hoping with work they will continue to be good calm little ratties.



Earthling has some cool stuff :)

Cupid's attitude

Cupid wants to sniff the iPhone

Cupid has been growing and has been calming down, becoming a better pet. I'm thinking the younger and smaller they are, the more jumpy they are because of their deep instinct to run away and save themselves.

She will now climb up onto your hands and sit there for a bit instead of immediately jumping back down. Knowing this, whenever I get babies, I will not try to pick them up until they are a certain age (will get back to you on that specific age) I will still try to pet them and have my hand in their cage as often as possible to make actual handling much easier.

So far, all is well with my little fuzzies. I brought them down to my house for a while and I had to use a water bowl instead of a water bottle. They seem to have figured out that if they throw the "healthy" lab blocks into the water, they get taken away and tossed. They don't throw any snacks into the water....

Can't wait till Cupid's head gets bigger so she can safely go in the big rat cage. They seem to REALLY like all the space, ladders, landings, and toys. Lucky seems lonely, by himself in the big cage without his little girl friend. At least right now they are together, happily sleeping all snuggled up.

They just love to eat....

I like to give my rats little nibbles of certain things that I am eating at the time.

So far Lucky LOVES the soft bread on the gorditas from Taco Bell and both Cupid and Lucky ADORE fortune cookies. They will just rip these foods from your hands and then come back looking for more. They don't get this often and they dont get very much of it. It's a special treat here and there for them to happily nibble on. And anyway...the more they associate your hand with yummy snacks, the easier it is to tame them ☺

Lost and Found

The other day (I want to say yesterday...Tuesday?) Cupid was no where to be found...she escaped! I was going to just flop over and quit right away...she's a little rat in this HUGE house with 3 dogs running around...I thought it was over before I even started....but my boyfriend said we needed to find her. So I sat down and thought, if I was a little ratty, where would I be?

The closet?...

I went into the closet and started moving some stuff around and what do you know? She was there! In a shoe! She popped her little head out and when I went to grab her she jumped and ran. We eventually caught her after we cleared the whole closet. Good thing there were no holes she could escape the closet through.

She is now in the critter carrier till her head gets bigger and then she can go in the big rat's cage.

Sexing

Female vs Male
Pretty simple?

Newest addition to the ratty home

On the tippy top floor of Cupid and Lucky's house, I placed one of these little snugly soft looking pet beds. The one I picked is brown with blue spots. I picked the rats up and put them inside the bed. Lucky stayed and has been up there for hours, Cupid jumped out and ran back down to the bottom but has since then made her way up to snuggle with Lucky.

Makes it easier to give them little bits of fortune cookie (which they LOVE) when they sit at the top close to the door.

My opinion on food bowls...

Food bowls are NOT worth putting into the cage with your soft furred rat. They drag even the largest pieces of food around and bury them where they please. I can't imagine what kind of mess they would make with small pellet food (I give them BIG lab blocks as a main part of their diet)

Everything from the lab blocks to the pieces of dried fruit and cracker snacks get scattered around the cage. Out of the maybe 10 lab blocks I put into the bowl only about half will stay where I put them and any treats I've tried to place in the bowl immediately get hidden elsewhere. I dont know why they do this but they just do. It's pretty amusing to watch them go about burying the treats and ferrying them around until they find the perfect spot.

So, bowls can just be a waste of space in opinion when it comes to these guys. Best to just not even bother and use the extra couple bucks on some extra tasty snacks!

Cages for soft furred rats

We went out today and got a real home for our little ratties. Its the same exact cage as you see above. Rat Habitat by Super Pet: Habitat Defined.

When you first see soft furred rats, you will probably not think RAT and might start to think that one of those hamster cages with all those tubes and tunnels would be oh so cute! These guys get bigger than you may think and while the bar spacing on cages for hamsters is great, these rats could possibly get stuck in the tubes or those little wheels that are closed up but have the holes in them. I wouldn't trust them. The last thing I want is for my little rats to get stuck/hurt.

With ALL PETS keep the full grown adult size in mind. Plan for an adult animal, not the little baby animal you are bringing home.

Very Interesting

This site shows the different colors rats can come in and what they are all called. Not specifically about soft furred rats but still interesting! Not even sure if these would apply to natals. I've only really seen them look a certain way (white face and a colored back with occasional spots)

Found a place with some color info for the natals

The good, the bad and the ugly

Ok so it's only good and bad foods/snacks for your rats that I have looked up online:
The Good

• fruit (avoid seeds): apples, cherries, grapes, banana, strawberries, other berries, melons, plums.
• vegetables: broccoli, potatoes, peas, carrot, cooked sweet potato, kale, parsley, bok choy, squash.
• cooked liver, other very lean meats (poultry) (cooked)
• whole wheat pasta and bread
• cooked beans (including soya)
• yogurt (especially with live cultures)
• brown rice
• unsweetened breakfast cereals
• mealworms
• small dog biscuits(mine LOVE these)
  
• some leftovers from your meals are okay in moderation, but avoid fatty or sugary scraps and items off the list below.
• special treats (given only occasionally): whole nuts in the shell (almonds, Brazil nuts, walnuts), sunflower seeds (high in fat), carob chips (this is a "fake" chocolate that you can also give to dog)
  

The Bad

• chocolate
• raw beans
• raw sweet potato
• cabbage, brussel sprouts
• green potatoes
• sweet sugary treats, any other "junk food"
• caffeinated beverages
• carbonated drinks
• peanut butter (in its straight form it can get stuck in your rats throat or mouth and suffocate it)
• Oranges/citrus (apparently can give male rats cancer)
  
• Dried corn (be careful! can sometimes have a fungus that can cause cancer)

I will keep adding to this as I find more info! Good list for me to have!

Corn Problem...Fixed

During my research I read that dried corn can contain a fungus which can cause cancer in rats when fed excessively. Not wanting to risk my little fuzz butts getting sick, I stopped feeding any snack that had whole or crushed pieces of corn in it.

Sadly, every treat stick in the aisle for small animals had corn in it! I thought this would be the end of the treats my little fuzzies love the most.

Then I decided to look at the treat sticks for birds. There were some that had no corn pieces in them. They looked to be made out of the same exact seeds, fruits, everything. So I decided to grab one to see if my Lucky and Cupid would like it. The bird sticks are usually much bigger so I cut a piece off and put it in their cage. Right away they began to nibble at it. Looks like it got 4 tiny thumbs up! Now they can get their treat sticks without all the big pieces of whole dried corn.

The kind of bird stick I got was Lafeber's Nutri-Meals. Has 31% dried fruit and veggies and 36% pellets: cranberries, raisins, sweet potatoes, and walnuts, millet seeds (2 kinds), and oats. Sounds like good ratty food to me.

Also for treats, I grabbed some dried papaya. They loved that too! Started nibbling right away. Not picky at all.