Vanilla in water - my experience

For a few weeks now I have been adding a few drops of pure vanilla extract (not imitation) to my rat and mouse water bottles. The difference in the odor levels is AMAZING. I was skeptical of this method, but my mom has a very sensitive nose, and I was having to clean cages every 3 days to keep her happy.

Now? A full week after cage cleaning and I can stick my head into the mouse cages (complete with male mouse) take a deep whiff, and not pass out.. in fact the rodent smell is barely noticeable! Now I have to go on visual rather than smell to decide when to clean cages.

Good to hear!...........when i finally begin breeding rodents, i'll keep this in mind :)

works well for me too :gj:

oh ya it's a blessing... an absolute blessing!

Are any of you using an automatic watering system?
I noticed it clogged the screen filter in the water bucket real quick...I had to pull them out and clean them 3 x's as much...I stopped using it, to much hassle...Jon

I use both. I've cleaned the filter once so far.

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Originally Posted by Shelby

For a few weeks now I have been adding a few drops of pure vanilla extract (not imitation) to my rat and mouse water bottles. The difference in the odor levels is AMAZING. I was skeptical of this method, but my mom has a very sensitive nose, and I was having to clean cages every 3 days to keep her happy.

Now? A full week after cage cleaning and I can stick my head into the mouse cages (complete with male mouse) take a deep whiff, and not pass out.. in fact the rodent smell is barely noticeable! Now I have to go on visual rather than smell to decide when to clean cages.

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Interesting. Mouse urine makes me gag so this is definately good news!

When I was breeding mice I would use it in their large water bottles, and I noticed it would get really gunky after a couple of days. I don't really have an odor with the rats other than the ammonia smell, but it would probably work out better because I refill their water a lot more often.

I have been using Stall Dry with the rats and have noticed that it REALLY cuts down on the ammonia smell. The Stall Dry is a little pricey over here and I can buy a similar cat litter product for much cheaper, so I'll probably give that a try after I run out of the SD.

No one carries Stall Dry around here (maybe I'll try the big tack store..) so I tried something similar called Sweet PDZ.. I haven't noticed much difference from it.

I also had to go to the big tack store a few cities over to get the dry stall, and wow its amazing stuff, no odor coming from the cages, I've actually cleaned them from them being poopy/food all over the place since I started using it, but not because of the smell.


Derek