Pet Forum / Mammals / Rats / August 2005

Welcome!! I'm so glad you decided to post. I know we have many lurkers
and that's great too but it's so much fun when we have new posters sharing.
First of all,I've driven four hours each way to get my breeder rats, so
I really don't think 60 miles really would have hurt them. The fella
really must care for his little guys. If you get your little guys while
young, chances are great that you won't have any aggressiveness, but
that's not to say that they won't mature and show dominance and settle
on who's alpha, beta and the minions. But with a nice big cage with lots
of room for each rat to call their own if they so please, they should
all be happy healthy together. I have one cage with 10 rats living
happily together, 3 are spayed females, the rest are males from 3
different litters and different ages too.
This sentence: "I wanted four today as I didn't want to split them up."
tells me that you are going to make one great rattie parent.
Castration should be the very last resort when dealing with feuding
males. If there are no blood drawn on either rat and humans, there
really is no need for surgery. Males usually work out their hormones
between the ages of 5 to 8 months, sometimes longer but usually they
start to calm down at 10 months. If you can tolerate the little
skirmishes, squealing and whining, then life will get easier on them.
I mean tolerate because sometimes you'll be so jumpy wondering if one of
them is going on a murdering rampage when all they are doing is actually
flipping one buddy on his back for a power grooming.
I certainly don't recommend buying from a pet shop that you don't trust
or when sexes are mixed, usually this means they don't really care for
their rats. Healthy rats are the ones getting the best of care right
from birth. If you can find a breeder in your area, then I would
recommend going to them.

Joanne
Owned by 14 rats.

CongRATS!  to the new Papa!

Lisa :)

ARGH!  I posted a big, long message in reply to you, and zap! it got fried
as I hit send.  Don't you love it??  Anyway....  welcome to the group.  Of
course I can never say what I said in my original message the way I wanted
to say it, so here's a summary:

I live in a very rural area and there are no rats for sale at all - in fact
there are no pet stores!  My first rat was Maggie and she was a rescue from
a pet store about 3 hours south of here.  Then came Jacques and Pierre, two
brothers about 5 weeks old from a breeder who lives 5 hours south of me.
They made the trip just fine.  I prepared ahead of time by setting up a nice
cage for them in the car with food, water, and plenty of safe hiding spots.

My boys have gotten along very well, although it has always been clear that
Jacques was dominant.  Pierre was much more shy, timid, and Jacques would
stand on Pierre's head, and generally just "run the cage".  I only have 3
rats in a very large cage (a Martin's 695
http://www.martinscages.com/images/full/r-695.jpg) so I think this helps.
As they matured there were squabbles and some squealing, especially if
"fights" broke out at night.  It never came to drawing blood or anything
like that, and they never once even nipped at me.  The hardest time was when
Jacques had a tumor on his leg at 4 months old and had to have surgery to
remove the leg.  He had to be in a cage alone for 7-10 days recovering, and
"reintroducing" him led to dominance issues that took a couple of days to
work out.  But they are good boys, and now at one year old, things are fine.
Sometimes I find all 3 on a different level of the cage, and sometimes like
tonight, I find them all trying to crowd into one of those tiny Kleenex
boxes.  Now THAT'S a sight.

Good luck with getting your ratties.  I think it's GREAT that you're
preparing ahead of time and doing some research.  I took about 2 months
getting everything together that I wanted to have before getting Maggie, but
then once it came time to get her, I COULDN'T wait.  Rats are great.

Meghan

Welcome and Congrats on becoming owned by some Fuzzy Butts.  In reply to
some of your Questions ....  I drove 6 hours each way to bring home some
particularly handsome boys.  They had a ball in their cage and
eventually all cuddled up and went to sleep.  No problems there that I
can see ...  ( sounds like the Shop didn't want to part with them)..LOL

I have a purpose built Rat House which can house up to 23 Rats.  I am
sadly down to 16.  Whenever I get new Rats I always get babies.  There
are never any introduction issues at all as the older boys tend to look
after them and teach them all that a Ratty Boy needs to know...LOL.  Of
all the Rats I have had so far, I only have one who is looking down the
barrel of a neuter at some stage.  They fight they squabble and its all
just noise...LOL.  There is power grooming and chasing and all sorts but
its just a Rat thing going on...:))  I have only ever had boys so I
cannot comment on Females although I do see to the needs of a couple of
Rat Ladies at the Local School.

Good luck and I hope you find being owned by some Fuzzy Butts as
rewarding as we all do here.

Kind regards Kate

I've hauled rats back and forth between Pennsylvania and Texas, which
is either a 2 or a 3-day drive depending on whether you want to drive
for 16 hours on one of those days.

They do fine. Mostly they find a box and sleep a lot.

Now, if your car doesn't have air conditioning 60 miles would concern
me, but otherwise I don't see any problem with it.

--Theresa

http://tiger_spot.mapache.org