Well this is my 2nd rat rack and I think I made some big improvements from my last one. Heres my old one...



First thing, I hate the rails, with the spacer they move around too much, so I wanted to make a rigid rail systems.

2nd thing, the tubs I bought weren't ideal, the small ones work for the most part, but the bigger ones were too flexible and fell out of the rails, so I had to mock up some 2x4 under them to hold them up, again it works, but I needed to choose a better tub.

I don't like not being to see how much water is in the 5 gallon bucket, and also I find myself filling up the water every other day, so a bigger tub would be nice also.

also screwed up on my mesh sizes, mice and asf escape out of 1/2 inch mesh when their young

so fixing all that I came up with this thing....



and I took picture along the way encase you guys were interested or had some ways to improve on it...

Started by getting all my measurements, I had to fit the rack within 74 inches between the wall and the water main in the rat room. and type of tubs I chose are cat litter boxes, it was the only thing I could find in bulk. they measure 15 1/4 inches across, so I could only fit 4 across. then had to figure out how many levels I could go, I figured out 5 and still have room for water to dump into it.

I'm not going to go too much into detail about measurements of the rack, because depending on your space and tubs, its going to change. so ill leave it at that.

So got all my material and picked up the table saw from my dad, and got to work. made it of 2x4's and mesh basically lol.

So my tubs are 18 1/2 inches long and I figured I need to reduce the rails by about 5 inches to still have room to get the tubs out with out hitting the water nipple. so i cut some 13 1/2 inch pieces for the rails.



So I measured the lip of my tubs and figured I would need a 5/8 inch deep cut to allow the tubs to slide nicely under the mesh, Set up the dado blade, the shank on the table saw could only let me put up to 3/8 inch of blades on it, so I started with a 1/4 inch of blades. the widest part of the lip was about 3/4 inch so I raised the blade on the table saw to 3/4 inch.



made my first cut, shown on the left are the end rails and the right are the middle rails, after a 1/4 cut



Put another 1/8 of blade on, so I could make my next cut



also shaved a little off the edge of the end rails



fits perfect



cut the rest of my wood, 19 inch and 68 inches boards, 60 inch and 66 inch for the legs



I wanted a small area to have food in and have plenty of area for ventilation so I have a 4 1/2 inch space for food, the rest is for air flow.



I put 1/2 inch mesh over the food hopper part and 1/4 inch mesh over the ventilation part. I will have the hoppers filled all the time so there shouldn't be any escapes.



Screw the rails on, I just simply started at the end, put a tub down, put a rail tight next to it, screwed it down, moved it over, rinse, repeat.



Add some legs, left an extra 6 inches of height on one side for the water tub platform.



something to stop the tubs from sliding out the back, I had a piece of plywood laying around so I cut some strips of it with the table saw since I had it here. You can use just about anything, even just a simple screw sticking out in the back if you got nothing else.



add auto watering system, put some 6 inch legs under the platform to hold it up




finished product, with water valve sitting right over it (still need support)



The 1 and only tub that's being used right now, these girl do not stop moving lol.



well since I just finished it today, I guess ill update if I have any "after the fact" comments to add, but so far I like it alot better than my other rack and hope to rebuild that one, in this style. Let me know if you have anything else to add or comment on, I'm always open to suggestions.