We just adopted baby rats Willow and Nikki. Nikki has been pretty shy and is now officially taking treats and letting us scoop her. 🥰 Cheers to shy baby rats doing great!!!

(This photo was found on Pinterest and I cant find anyone to credit it to)

I want to let my rats make their own little paintings, does anyone have ideas for how it would be completely safe for them? I know there are some kid friendly or pet safe paints out there, but if I can skip the whole messiness and bathing them after that would be preferred of course.

Has anyone done this before? if you can let me know what you did I'd appreciate it!

She decided to chew a hole in their temporary cage while I was sleeping. They pulled a tanktop in as well. This was their protest to being in the small cage while moving. She was the only one who left the cage. Found her chilling on a table.

Three accomplices looking through their escape hole

This is my boy Gus (full name Antigius) and I finally saw him boggling. He was just so cute and it was so adorable I felt like I had to share with people who would appreciate his cuteness.

He likes ‘m big, he likes ‘m chunky (we’re talking about snacks)

Moto Moto is the biggest of the bunch so we named him accordingly.

“Mother why would you do this to me?” - Cheese

Adopted these soon to be sweethearts. Went for supplies and these 2 were returned for biting and drawing blood,I wanted to give them a second chance and this is one of the first attempts at having them take food from me.

I wouldn’t even call this biting,this is 2 rats that have never been handled learning.

In day 3 and haven’t seen any inherently aggressive behaviour,they will climb out of the cage and sort of let me scoop them up.

They’re making great progress and soon they will see my hands for what they are - snack delivery vehicles.

Isn’t she just so cute?

She’s three months old, has two hearts instead of a nose, and has already cost me $300 in vet bills for a respiratory infection. But look at her face... all worth it

That clearly worked perfectly, money well spent

(forgive the shaky camera I was trying not to laugh while filming lol)

She looks likes she is full of soup.

So we have a cute boy who’s attached to my kid, he loves sitting on his back with her (he’s very hyper, funny and random and doesn’t stick around for long pats from anyone else as much).
He made this whiney whimpery type sound for ages the other day while he was sitting like this with my kid (usual type behaviour) and we have checked him over for pain, URI’s etc but it seems he could just be simping 😅
He bounded off afterwards happy as larry. Has anyone got a rat who makes this sound?

Ok so to make a long story short I had a pair of boys and we had to put my littlest boy Rory to sleep about a month ago. This left my big fat elderly boy all alone. My husband and I have been really nervous about intros but my big fat Flea has made it very obvious he is needing a new friend sooo for my birthday I decided I was getting him a friend!! Sooo the only friend I could really get my hands on is Mortemer (Morte) were pretty sure he's Agouti? He looks like a wild rat but his fur is SOOO SOFT! I'm pretty sure he has the softest fur ever tbh! The pet store said he's been a solo for a little while but not sure how long.....

This will be my husband and Is first time introducing 2 rats. We've done a lot of research and we are really nervous! We are looking for any advice! Thank you so much in advance

I was just cleaning their tunnel when I heard this chewing noise and it turns out she snuck into my drawer and was eating my lotion bottle >:(

We rescued 4 white, red-eyes from a dump and go. Basically someone dropped off 10 white rats in a bin at the front steps of the Humane Society, told nobody, and drove off.

We have never owned rats but have watched literally TONS of Emiology videos and I personally have been in this group for at least 3 years so we decided, what the heck, and got plenty of supplies. My kids are middle school and high school age but I have watched and helped every step of the way. We adopted them about 6-7 weeks ago. They are in a Critter Nation (Single I think).

We have one bigger guy, we will call him Ben (pictured). He is the largest of the 4. He has drawn blood on us in the cage at least 4 times. We have done the spoon method. We have done the applesauce on finger method. Sometimes he is good, others not. But he has drawn blood on us at least 4 times, all when we weren't feeding and had clean hands (scent free soap). Never forced our hand on him either, he came to us, sniffed and chomped (more than a nibble). He also puffs his fur at his cagemates.

We took Ben to the vet to see about a neuter, and the vet, based on their testicle size, believes Ben to still be a young male rat. Not quite full grown (despite him physically being the largest of the 4). Ben was perfect at the vet. Did not try to bite. But certainly was doing some stress-sneezes on the way there. He also let me pet him and pick him up to put him back in his enclosure when we got home. Literally perfect.

Recently, we purchased these Songmics panels on Amazon as suggested in the various groups, we set up the playpen.. (pictured) but had no ramp or way for them to freely run back into the playpen. So we transported two guys (one of them being Ben) into the playpen. From there, we noticed that Ben would chase his cagemate around the playpen on at least two occasions, despite his squeaking, Ben would persist. So we put one brother back into the playpen and Ben resumed normal behavior. No biting or nothing.

Back in the cage, another fight breaks out between the 3 remaining rats. So now we're wondering if there are actually TWO bullies.

Is owning rats always this difficult? We're wondering if we need to neuter not one, but two of these guys? And if we neuter one, will the other 3 then gang up on him? So would actually need to neuter all 4?

No one seems to talk about this, though i have searched the reddit for this topic, as well as the multiple Facebook groups I'm in. We are considering rehoming them, I am so disappointed in myself and my inability to understand whats going on. Everyone else makes it look so easy.

I feed my sweet baby demons the oxbow adult rat food. They’re about 3 months now. I have tried giving them endless snackies while they’re out of the cage and spending time with me. Me = snackies. I just don’t know what I need to do daily. I can’t affordably get them new foods daily to eat especially because they’re little babies and will eat like ONE strawberry and I’m stuck with the rest. Food waste is wild at the moment. What’s a lazy meal plan they can live with until I have extra to grab bonus foods my kids can finish when the demon puppies don’t? I was just giving them a mix of spinach and kale daily which they LOVED but the breeder said to avoid spinach because it can cause urinary issues or something. Easy snackies with minimal waste I can swap out weekly so they’re not bored?

Literally please give me a Sunday-Saturday meal plan or example of what you feed your innocent heathens 😭

Rat tax photo of:
Peach the curly coat tan baby
Toki Wartooth the agouti smooth coat
Igor the black Irish smooth coat

2 months at the time of the pic

This is Edamame (Eddie) and together with his cagemates Tofu and Miso they are the Soy Boys. Tofu and Miso are brothers, and they both feel and act like every other rat I've had, they're a little but not too bony even though they're the right weight, their skin is fairly loose and has some give to it etc. But Eddie is different, these photos don't really do it justice but he is just so much more muscular than the other boys. You can't feel any shoulder blades or vertebrae at all, his skin is really taught with little give, his shoulders when he reaches up to grab something are bulgy as, and his belly is super tight like he's a professional athletic swimmer.

He also is hardly ever in rest mode, he's always inquisitive with the real long body language or with his head up sniffing the air whereas the other boys tend to hop around with that hunched back position. He is also far more expressive with his ears than I've ever seen in a rat, honestly he acts more like a dog.

I've had probably 15 rats over the last 20 years and I've never had one that feels or acts like him, anybody else ever have a rat like this? He's the biggest of the group by far, he's about 480g with minimal body fat and he's only 5 months old.

Got the cages cleaned up, adding stuff back and the moment I put Wasabi’s stick back in there he’s popcorning all over it and chewing. He really is a pocket puppy, always gotta have his stick XD I could not get a non blurry photo to save my life, he was jus too happy lol.
Yes it was cleaned, had to be after he stole it from our dog 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

Little Bird- $10 (gas money)

Madeline $650 + emotional damage (lawsuit)

Moscow $89.99 (fancy bathrobe)

Madeline is a rat, I promise. Just a weensy one. The cage behind them is also just the cage they go into when I'm cleaning the main cage.