183615 pts · May 14, 2021
12 rats in a trench coat training their ratty brethren!
Yeah this is a tribute to a meme in the rat community involving a nakie rat called Neil from 2006! But also rats only live 2 years on average sadly - I WISH they lived 4 years, in 12 years with rats I've had only 1 rat reach about 4 and she was basically the human equivalent of a 125 year old lol. Most of my rats average about 28 months, but anything over 2 years is considered a very good and long life for rats :(
Takes about 6 hours for a straight clean (ie clean everything, put 90% of stuff back where it is, swap hammocks/boxes and rearrange a bit of stuff). Then for a more detailed clean like this time it takes 8-10 hours, or 12 hours if I want to really theme it. So a bit of a slog, but it only needs cleaning every 6-8 weeks (honestly it can go longer easily, but I like to switch it up from time to time...I have 9 girls in it currently) so its not too bad.
Depends on what the conversion for rat wheel running to electricity is lol
All that is to say I have 7 more older girls now (and 2 younger ones) and I'm hoping they will be around for a while...unfortunately 4 are from Cinnamon's breeder and I've now seen their rats don't seem to have great health, and 2 of them already have other health issues (brain tumor for one, mammary tumors for the other :( ) so its hard to say how long they have. Hopefully both girls respond to the anti-tumor medication (cabergoline) that they are on, but we just take it one day at a time.
Anyways on top of those 5, I also took in 3 from someones "oops" litter. So that gave me a total of 8 rats around the same age...which I should know by now is never a good idea but sometimes I can't help it and still end up with a bunch of same aged rats. Anyways the other rats I've lost actually haven't been any of the other same aged girls, but rather were 4 rats from several years back who were extraordinarily long lived and so their passing was more of a coincidence with Cinnamons
I typically add in 2-4 rats each year in order to keep a rolling group, and have done so for the last 12 years (crazy to think about!) But sometimes I add in more rats, like for example 1.5 years back with Cinnamons group I was supposed to get 3 babies, but one passed before pickup and the breeder decided to give me 3 other rats (for a total of 5) to "compensate" (I didn't ask for that, but I wasn't going to leave them...and no, I won't go back to that breeder for many reasons :/ )
Anyways I love the 2 vet practices I go to, they are a bit pricey but well worth it for their level of care. It is unfortunately more expensive to take rats to the vet than larger animals (for example a rat spay in my area is $500...the animal shelter I work for does them for $35 in dogs and cats lol, I always tell them I WISH they saw rats!), but again its well worth it and I appreciate my vets a ton for what they do.
The reason I love my current vet is because they take these supplementary resources and look into them further, and also don't mind me starting meds ahead of time (certain rat issues you learn to recognize as a rat owner, and you get used to starting them on certain meds right away since rats go downhill much faster than larger animals like dogs). Plus they genuinely love seeing the rats and are always great with them, which the first 2 vets I went to were not (this was years back though).
Technically its a general practice, however they have a few individual vets who specialize in exotics and they are who the rats see. Now unfortunately exotic vets tend to have a very broad overview of the animals they treat, so they won't always be up to date on a specific animal in my experience. So I always bring in supplementary resources (the rat health guide is SUPER helpful for this - its kept up to date on all current rat illnesses and known treatments, and has dosing guides).
Older sadly, nearly 2 (rats only live 26 months on average, so she is an old lady :/)
That's Coffee, she's a nice chill girl who was very popular due her chill chunkness! She and Jellybean (super tiny dwarf girl) really stole the show!
Some of the kids asked where some of the rats from last time were, so I think there was a hope for more rats to be miraculously produced lol (some of the rats from last time are too old for me to take again, but I think its pretty adorable how kids remember them from prior events!) But I did have some adults side-eye me for saying I *only* have 10 rats currently lol, clearly 10 being a small amount for me does not equate to other peoples idea of a *small* group!
Heh this was during the start of free-range, they needed to get up and be active while they had the chance! Being lazy makes more sense for Pistachio and Jellybean, but Feta (the pink girl) is a youngin and needs to have her active time to avoid annoying the older girls later on lol
I mean all the girls are just 2-4 weeks apart in age, so yes, they overlap in months all the time lol. In this case Pistachio is 9 days short of 21 months, but it seems silly to write that so I rounded up.
I tickle and hand wrestle my rats who enjoy it - but a lot of rats don't enjoy hand wrestling or tickling after reaching adulthood, so you have to read their body language and adjust accordingly (usually rats used in those experiments are very young, often just 3-4 weeks old - this is the prime time when rats enjoy that sort of interaction, with many no longer enjoying it after 3-4 months). But some rats like my girl Chickpea are an exception, so it never hurts to try!
Baby Pistachio ate all the pistachios, leading to a notable size increase :P
Yup! I actually got them for shelter dog enrichment but had to try them with my rats first - the pack I got also had peanut buttur flavor and I haven't tried that yet!
Crumb isn't from the same breeder as these girls - Crumb is one of my pet store girls, and her sisters are Cracker and Coffee. Those 3 are a tad older than these girls, and will also be turning 2 soon (in just 2 weeks in their case).
Plain yogurt!
Espresso was a standard sized rat, but she was definitely very sweet!
Hah not quite, although I did once find a domestic rat living under a restaurant grease trap! I caught him and found him a good home with other males, since he was too old to comfortably neuter and I have females. I had him for 3 weeks and he was so sweet, and his family then had him for another 6+ months (he was very old). Anyways Biscuit here was a feeder rat, bred for food for other pets - some people think feeders can't make good pets, but all my experience has been that they absolutely do!
Heh that was S'more, one of Biscuits younger cagemates! She was super shy and skittish, so she preferred to stick to under the blanket vs exploring, although she did gain a lot of confidence with age and training (she LOVED basketball, whenever she wanted a treat she would go find an item and try to dunk it somewhere lol)
Another video proving that Biscuit was the chillest and cuddliest bean - she was such a sweet girl, definitely a great example that rats are amazing pets regardless of where they come from ❤
Hehe Tofu (hairless girl) is just more of a princess who believes her human should hand her the treats directly - she'll sometimes walk over to a pile of treats and then stare me down so I can pick up and hand her the exact same treat lol, she's knows she can get anything she wants and takes full advantage of that!
Yup that's Crumb!
Just over 2 years is average, although rarely you may get 3 or even 4 years (I have 1 nearly 4 year old girl now...that's after 120+ rats over nearly 12 years, and my rats average lifespan has been 28-30 months).
Yup! Although boggling is not just a sign of contentment, its really a sign of the rat feeling something strongly and so can also be seen in rats with extreme pain or fear (you have to look at their entire body language to determine which is which - here Crumb is very relaxed and cuddled under all her buddies, so we know she is very happy and content). Some rats are more expressive than others too, so some won't boggle much in their life while others do it all the time.
I just find them at a local pet store, its one of those treat sticks sold for rats/rabbits/hamsters/birds/etc. Since rats have pretty much zero dietary restrictions you can grab the ones for bird or rabbits or guinea pigs or so forth, it doesn't matter if its rat specific or not - I usually grab different ones each time because they seem to like the variety!
As promised, here is Crumb's blooper video with the ferris wheel! This was her first attempt fetching from it, and she was a bit too enthusiastic lol. Poor Cinnamon was more confused than anything (no worries, she wasn't hurt!), and I feel bad for blaming her for toppling the wheel (it wasn't until watching this video back that I realized that Crumb was the culprit!)
Comparing my ~1.5 year old standard Coffee and my ~1.5 year old dwarf Pumpkin Seed - it really cracks me up that Pumpkin is about the size of Coffee's head lol, its like comparing a chihuahua to a dane 😂 Also guess who wears the pants in this relationship? Here's a hint, the one in question has very much been taking lessons from my senior dwarf Toast!
Yeah this is a tribute to a meme in the rat community involving a nakie rat called Neil from 2006! But also rats only live 2 years on average sadly - I WISH they lived 4 years, in 12 years with rats I've had only 1 rat reach about 4 and she was basically the human equivalent of a 125 year old lol. Most of my rats average about 28 months, but anything over 2 years is considered a very good and long life for rats :(
Takes about 6 hours for a straight clean (ie clean everything, put 90% of stuff back where it is, swap hammocks/boxes and rearrange a bit of stuff). Then for a more detailed clean like this time it takes 8-10 hours, or 12 hours if I want to really theme it. So a bit of a slog, but it only needs cleaning every 6-8 weeks (honestly it can go longer easily, but I like to switch it up from time to time...I have 9 girls in it currently) so its not too bad.
Depends on what the conversion for rat wheel running to electricity is lol
All that is to say I have 7 more older girls now (and 2 younger ones) and I'm hoping they will be around for a while...unfortunately 4 are from Cinnamon's breeder and I've now seen their rats don't seem to have great health, and 2 of them already have other health issues (brain tumor for one, mammary tumors for the other :( ) so its hard to say how long they have. Hopefully both girls respond to the anti-tumor medication (cabergoline) that they are on, but we just take it one day at a time.
Anyways on top of those 5, I also took in 3 from someones "oops" litter. So that gave me a total of 8 rats around the same age...which I should know by now is never a good idea but sometimes I can't help it and still end up with a bunch of same aged rats. Anyways the other rats I've lost actually haven't been any of the other same aged girls, but rather were 4 rats from several years back who were extraordinarily long lived and so their passing was more of a coincidence with Cinnamons
I typically add in 2-4 rats each year in order to keep a rolling group, and have done so for the last 12 years (crazy to think about!) But sometimes I add in more rats, like for example 1.5 years back with Cinnamons group I was supposed to get 3 babies, but one passed before pickup and the breeder decided to give me 3 other rats (for a total of 5) to "compensate" (I didn't ask for that, but I wasn't going to leave them...and no, I won't go back to that breeder for many reasons :/ )
Anyways I love the 2 vet practices I go to, they are a bit pricey but well worth it for their level of care. It is unfortunately more expensive to take rats to the vet than larger animals (for example a rat spay in my area is $500...the animal shelter I work for does them for $35 in dogs and cats lol, I always tell them I WISH they saw rats!), but again its well worth it and I appreciate my vets a ton for what they do.
The reason I love my current vet is because they take these supplementary resources and look into them further, and also don't mind me starting meds ahead of time (certain rat issues you learn to recognize as a rat owner, and you get used to starting them on certain meds right away since rats go downhill much faster than larger animals like dogs). Plus they genuinely love seeing the rats and are always great with them, which the first 2 vets I went to were not (this was years back though).
Technically its a general practice, however they have a few individual vets who specialize in exotics and they are who the rats see. Now unfortunately exotic vets tend to have a very broad overview of the animals they treat, so they won't always be up to date on a specific animal in my experience. So I always bring in supplementary resources (the rat health guide is SUPER helpful for this - its kept up to date on all current rat illnesses and known treatments, and has dosing guides).
Older sadly, nearly 2 (rats only live 26 months on average, so she is an old lady :/)
That's Coffee, she's a nice chill girl who was very popular due her chill chunkness! She and Jellybean (super tiny dwarf girl) really stole the show!
Some of the kids asked where some of the rats from last time were, so I think there was a hope for more rats to be miraculously produced lol (some of the rats from last time are too old for me to take again, but I think its pretty adorable how kids remember them from prior events!) But I did have some adults side-eye me for saying I *only* have 10 rats currently lol, clearly 10 being a small amount for me does not equate to other peoples idea of a *small* group!
Heh this was during the start of free-range, they needed to get up and be active while they had the chance! Being lazy makes more sense for Pistachio and Jellybean, but Feta (the pink girl) is a youngin and needs to have her active time to avoid annoying the older girls later on lol
I mean all the girls are just 2-4 weeks apart in age, so yes, they overlap in months all the time lol. In this case Pistachio is 9 days short of 21 months, but it seems silly to write that so I rounded up.
I tickle and hand wrestle my rats who enjoy it - but a lot of rats don't enjoy hand wrestling or tickling after reaching adulthood, so you have to read their body language and adjust accordingly (usually rats used in those experiments are very young, often just 3-4 weeks old - this is the prime time when rats enjoy that sort of interaction, with many no longer enjoying it after 3-4 months). But some rats like my girl Chickpea are an exception, so it never hurts to try!
Baby Pistachio ate all the pistachios, leading to a notable size increase :P
Yup! I actually got them for shelter dog enrichment but had to try them with my rats first - the pack I got also had peanut buttur flavor and I haven't tried that yet!
Crumb isn't from the same breeder as these girls - Crumb is one of my pet store girls, and her sisters are Cracker and Coffee. Those 3 are a tad older than these girls, and will also be turning 2 soon (in just 2 weeks in their case).
Plain yogurt!
Espresso was a standard sized rat, but she was definitely very sweet!
Hah not quite, although I did once find a domestic rat living under a restaurant grease trap! I caught him and found him a good home with other males, since he was too old to comfortably neuter and I have females. I had him for 3 weeks and he was so sweet, and his family then had him for another 6+ months (he was very old). Anyways Biscuit here was a feeder rat, bred for food for other pets - some people think feeders can't make good pets, but all my experience has been that they absolutely do!
Heh that was S'more, one of Biscuits younger cagemates! She was super shy and skittish, so she preferred to stick to under the blanket vs exploring, although she did gain a lot of confidence with age and training (she LOVED basketball, whenever she wanted a treat she would go find an item and try to dunk it somewhere lol)
Another video proving that Biscuit was the chillest and cuddliest bean - she was such a sweet girl, definitely a great example that rats are amazing pets regardless of where they come from ❤
Hehe Tofu (hairless girl) is just more of a princess who believes her human should hand her the treats directly - she'll sometimes walk over to a pile of treats and then stare me down so I can pick up and hand her the exact same treat lol, she's knows she can get anything she wants and takes full advantage of that!
Yup that's Crumb!
Just over 2 years is average, although rarely you may get 3 or even 4 years (I have 1 nearly 4 year old girl now...that's after 120+ rats over nearly 12 years, and my rats average lifespan has been 28-30 months).
Yup! Although boggling is not just a sign of contentment, its really a sign of the rat feeling something strongly and so can also be seen in rats with extreme pain or fear (you have to look at their entire body language to determine which is which - here Crumb is very relaxed and cuddled under all her buddies, so we know she is very happy and content). Some rats are more expressive than others too, so some won't boggle much in their life while others do it all the time.
I just find them at a local pet store, its one of those treat sticks sold for rats/rabbits/hamsters/birds/etc. Since rats have pretty much zero dietary restrictions you can grab the ones for bird or rabbits or guinea pigs or so forth, it doesn't matter if its rat specific or not - I usually grab different ones each time because they seem to like the variety!
As promised, here is Crumb's blooper video with the ferris wheel! This was her first attempt fetching from it, and she was a bit too enthusiastic lol. Poor Cinnamon was more confused than anything (no worries, she wasn't hurt!), and I feel bad for blaming her for toppling the wheel (it wasn't until watching this video back that I realized that Crumb was the culprit!)
Comparing my ~1.5 year old standard Coffee and my ~1.5 year old dwarf Pumpkin Seed - it really cracks me up that Pumpkin is about the size of Coffee's head lol, its like comparing a chihuahua to a dane 😂 Also guess who wears the pants in this relationship? Here's a hint, the one in question has very much been taking lessons from my senior dwarf Toast!