Repairing chewed tubs??

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Originally Posted by Expensive hobby

Even if they are your breeders, feed em off. Not a single one of my 60+ rats chew. Not one single tooth mark on any of my tubs.

I often sell off my feeders as pets. None bite, none chew, not kill babies. I can literally keep my babies with all the males with no issues.

Good genes go much further with a colony than good numbers.


I like my Dubstep to go Wop Wop Wop Wop

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I agree with this, any time in the past when I've had a chewed out tub, I fed off EVERY animal in that tub. All of the breeders, both male and female and all their young. Chewing is a learned behavior and rodents learn VERY fast. It's been years since I've had a chewed tub.

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Originally Posted by j94712

ok thanks for the advice. I do have some wood blocks in each of the tubs, so they have things to chew on. But i think that tub have a gap between the food hopper and the tub, so they have the space to chew on it. Maybe if i just fix that, they will stop.

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They will not stop, trust us lol. They will continue chewing and will teach any other rat they come into contact with. I had chewers twice, and down the hatch(es) they went immediately. That was it, no more chewers.

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Originally Posted by Mrl249

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/01/22/ehupegy4.jpg

We also use the nuts and washers.

We haven't bought a new tub in over a year.

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I did this because I started out breeding ASF and those monsters chew aaaaaanything. In fact, on the very first night that I had my colony I had them out on the balcony (middle of summer) and I woke up in the morning to a bunch of rats scaling up my stucco wall. Luckily I got all of them back.

The nut & washer thing works a charm.

ok so the conclusion is no mercy to chewers!

I also agree with getting rid of chewers.
But, I did have a chew out in my Siamese bin. Patched it with some mesh wire and didn't have another incident.

You can patch the hole like you would patch a hole in fabric. Drill a few small holes for your strand of wire to thread the mesh onto the inside of the plastic, and tie on the outside like a bread tie. I try to keep all sharp edges curled under. I don't want to see any eyeballs hanging out from getting caught on the wire.

THe last chewers I had, I moved to a large tanks to use them as breeders until my new breeders grew big enough to replace them. The chewers and everyone in that bin and all the babies they produced while in the tank were all feeders.

No more chewing. Sometimes the rats will gnaw at the wire if I'm not fast enough to get to THEIR bin to give out treats/food/water when I'm working the room, but they just bite the wire to get my attention, they don't do damage and they don't chew the bin at all.

I've had both rats & mice and had minimal problems with chewing. 100% of the problems I consider to be my fault, because I left the animals in enclosures that had an inviting edge they could get their teeth on. Not that I necessarily saw it that way until the rodents kindly pointed it out to me by chewing through it. :P By eliminating those with such methods as keeping the bin very tight to the screen above it when building the racks, and some nut & washer type tricks for the silly holes that come in the tubs, I've eliminated the problem.

If I ever did have any rodents that chewed through places such as the sides or corners of the tubs, I'd get rid of them immediately.