Anyone else end up with pet rodents?

So our new BP did not eat his rat pup last night. I went to get a container for it from the kitchen, to save it for another day, and when I came back into the living room my wife and son were bonding with it...petting it, naming it, and feeding it. By the end of the evening, they were carrying it around in a little pouch :no:

Now they are off to the pet store to buy him a buddy...

Anyone else have something similar happen?

Rat pup? As in too young to be weaned? Them bonding with it may be a painful experience as it might just die.

As for pet rats, all my breeders are my pets

Well, the store is what called it a rat pup when I bought it. I'm still a noob in the hobby, so I'm still a bit confused about the terms used to describe feeder rodent size.

I just did a quick search on rat pup, and this little guy is definitely bigger than what I'm seeing. It's hard to tell without a scale to measure its weight (scale is coming later this week), but I'd guess that it is either a small or large weaner. Is this still too young to try to keep as a pet? My son is only 3, so I'd prefer to get him separated from the rat before he gets too attached, if it is going to die on him.

http://www.joinrats.com/RatHealth/OO...aningRatGuide/

Is the rat very young? Lucky for them that the rat can already be held and bonded that quickly!

I had this happen to me only briefly, except just because I thought the rat was very cute and I couldn't feed him away after buying it. Unfortunately, the rat was already older and fearful, so whenever I tried to bond/hold him, he would freak out and pee and poo continuously in my hand. And then he got a bit older and finally bit me really well when I tried to pet him.

So off he went, back to the snake belly where he was first intended. :\

If I ever get another pet rat, it will definitely be one already tamed from a breeder.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Oxylepy

http://www.joinrats.com/RatHealth/OO...aningRatGuide/

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Thank you for this. I have read through some of it and will take it home and compare it to the little guy we have.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by redshepherd

Is the rat very young? Lucky for them that the rat can already be held and bonded that quickly!

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I'm guessing it is still quite young, although it already seems to have all of its hair and markings. The link that Oxy shared gives me more to go off of, such as ears and head shape. I should be able to get a better guesstimate on the age this evening.

It is very social! They had it on the floor this morning and it was crawling around in their laps and hands and does not seem to mind being held. Was strong, too, as it held onto my wife's hand at one point when she tried setting it down and ended up gripping her fingers and was upside-down. She had to gently pry it off with her other hand haha

Yup. This has happened to me and I also had to go get another one for a buddy. They make awesome pets. :)

My colony of feeder/breeders is considerably more friendly than most pet rats I've seen, honestly. But then, I select for calm friendly rats too. Biters were culled, along with their offspring.

If it's old enough to make it, then it should do quite well. But get it a buddy for sure. Single rats don't do as well as a pair.

Wife went back and got a 2nd one earlier today. So now we have two pet rats; Snickers and Spot haha

I'm still at work so I haven't been able to see the two of them together, but my wife said the one we got last night grabbed the new one and started nuzzling their noses together and then appeared to groom it. Now they are cuddled up together :)

Is it a male female pair? If it is you'll have babies in no time. My rats would never bite me, I keep them in glass aquariums and they watch me working in the snake room / rodent room every day. I imagine if I kept them in tubs where they couldn't see me they would be totally different animals and probably be really scared of me.

I know now a lot of snake people that have pet rats and sell the babies and use a few for their own snakes. Although now you may have to always buy frozen thawed because of your family bonding with the snake food LOL.

Also keep in mind that rats don't live much longer than one year and they have up to 20 babies every three weeks if kept with males!!!

We aren't entirely sure of the sex, yet. My wife says they're a bit fragrant haha From what I've read online, it seems that females don't give off an odor.

It could just be the odors from being crammed in a large drawer with all the other rats, though. I think we are going to try to give them tiny little sponge baths tonight to clean them up.


We have an old unused bookcase in the garage that I'm going to convert into a multi-storied enclosure for them. Cover the front of the bookcase with a hinged plexiglass door or something like that, then keep the bookcase in the living room where they get to see all the action during the day :D

Well I have a couple dozen rats and I can tell you from experience that they don't smell at all, even the males. One adult male mouse smells a million times worse than all my rats together. I keep my rodents in critter cages, basically glass aquariums with screen tops. I used to put carbon filter pads on all my screen lids but now only keep them on the mouse tanks. I change their pine bedding weekly and bleach everything monthly.

You should lift up the rats and take a few photos of their private parts and post them here, there's a lot of people that can sex young rats. If you end up with a male and a female you better watch out... They say that baby rats are sexually mature very young, in fact if you keep a male and female and babies all together all the time you will end up with over one million rats in about 18 months!!!

It's best to control the breeding, you would need one more male and one more female and keep them in pairs. I have only one male in my whole setup and rotate the females in and out. I also keep lone females to raise their young and let them raise at least two babies to weanling age so they don't freak out from me feeding off all their babies. And it's way easier to feed a hairless pinky than to feed off a cuddly weanling, especially if you have family watching LOL. And I also found out that females with babies can get really aggressive if you introduce a male while the babies are still pinkys. It's fine when they reach weanling age though. And females about to give birth get a bit nasty too... Also, if you let the female raise all 16 or so babies she will get really worn out. It's best to feed off all but a max of 6 at a time.

I have a boa. All the left overs go to her. So no pet rats for me.