A Rat Colony When You Have Little Space...

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Originally Posted by SnakeySnakeSnake

I designed a rat rack that would work well for small spaces/ people who want to interact/dont have much room.

It is 2' wide 2' deep and 4' or 6' tall. Using primarly wood, scratch/chew resistant whiteboard, and hardware cloth. The 6' tall version (mainly to conserve space) will have 6 levels about 8-10" tall, room for food to be placed on top of the racks for auto feeding, a hinged wood/HW cloth door with removeable dividers on aluminum rails.

That leaves the option of having 6 spots that are 2'x2' or dividing them up for mothers to have 1'x2' sections to themselves.

I am building myself a 4'wide and 6' tall version at the moment and will post pics when I do :).


This is a great post, good job jo!

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Love to see the pics Bryan when it's done. I'm not much of a builder at all so I needed to find something pre-made that would do the job, not cost me much money and be sturdy enough to last. These plastic kitchen storage shelves fit the bill for me. :)

Nice idea definately. Those shelving units are often on sale at the HDepot, and some that are even cheaper are sold as "garage shelving", made out of metal. I used to have those back in my old bedroom back home (they fit the decor, hehe) and they are nice and sturdy.

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Originally Posted by rabernet

Sticky worthy, my friend, sticky worthy. This will definitely help a lot of people!

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Thanks Robin. I hope it just gives an idea of different options or somewhere to start small when you basically are living with your rats or want them as pets as well as providing top quality feeders for your snake collection.

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Originally Posted by frankykeno

Love to see the pics Bryan when it's done. I'm not much of a builder at all so I needed to find something pre-made that would do the job, not cost me much money and be sturdy enough to last. These plastic kitchen storage shelves fit the bill for me. :)

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I agree, I started with some shelves but then decided to try carpentry

First (small) rat rack storage

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...oneRatRack.jpg

I ended up tearing these down because the simple storage shelves from Walmart were better :)

One thing I didn't mention is the supplies to make a rat tub for this type of plastic rack. You need a tub of the dimensions mentioned in the my first post, you need some of the 1/2" hardware cloth, a bag of the heavier grade zipties and something to either cut or melt out a large rectangle from the lid of the tub. Make sure you get tubs that have good tight fitting lids with those snap down clips at each end (nobody needs an escapee rat lol). You should be able to find the rolls of hardware cloth at Home Depot or Lowe's in the fencing or garden departments for about 5 to 7 dollars. Don't use chickenwire, rats can chew through that in a heartbeat. Use 1/4" hardware cloth if you are raising mice instead of rats. All the ventilation comes from this cut out lid. I used to put some extra ventilation in the sides but any hole is an invitation to chew so I stopped that fast. I only melt three holes now. One for the spigot of the water bottle (just barely big enough to feed that through into the tank) and two small ones to run a piece of wire to hold the bottle upright. If you find the rats are chewing around the water bottle spigot just put a square of hardware cloth over that area and they tend to give up pretty fast. One of our members did a nice pictorial awhile back on making a plastic rat tub but darned if I can find it right now to link it to this thread.

awesome post, i was looking into finding something similar for our pets :D thanks

http://warrenreptiles.com/gallery/ma...serialNumber=2

More here: http://warrenreptiles.com/gallery/ma...?g2_itemId=412

how do you put the screen in the top of the lids??? can we post pics of that and how you do it, what product are you using also

well for pics you will have to wait for jo to take or post them.As for how wee get the mesh into the center of the tubs it's really pretty easy. first you need a soddering iron, a razor knife box cutter etc, the mesh or hardware cloth and some zip ties. then you measure out the area you are going to remove I draw out the whole rectangle the lines keep me on track. Then you remove it by first using the soddering iron to get a hole into which you can fit your cutting tool then you just follow the lines and remove the plastic piece. Place the piece of hardware cloth mesh you have cut making shure it over laps the edge of the hole by at least to or three squares all aroud. The using the soddering iron you put two holes one on eitherside of one of the bars in the mesh and secrue it down with a zip tie, use as many as necessary so that the mesh cant be easily forced up as they don't need much space to esacpe. hope this helps.

that was a perfect explination.. thanks!!!!! Definetly worth a try, is the mesh something you can buy anywhere (Walmart) or is it at homedepot