best pet you can get (Rats)

Member Name: Mabelthemini

Product:	Rats
Date:	29/10/08 (70 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Clean,intelligent

Disadvantages: none

Mention rats as pets and most people recoil, rats to them mean one thing - the plague, fortunately the pet rat is a completely different species to that wild rat so put that thought out of your head.

Rats are amazing pets, they are clean,intelligent and very rarely bite, unlike hamsters who are quite vicious little blighters. If you want a pet for a child then you can't go far wrong with a rat.

If you are getting one from pet shop then check the place out thoroughly first, if they keep breeding and inbreeding from the same base of rats then they can get prone to tumours which is upsetting and expensive. One of my rats suffered from this and it is not a nice experience and ended up in me having to get her put down.

I purchased my first rat and ended up getting 7 free as she was pregnant, not a bad free gift! luckily i managed to find homes for the 3 males that were produced and i kept the 3 females and the mother.

The male rats tend to be a lot bigger and their fur isnt as smooth as the females,temperament wise though i haven't noticed much difference in mine.

The life span is usually around 2 years although one of mine lived to be 3.

A good idea is to keep them in a large fishtank with a wire mesh lid, this way you can put a good depth of sawdust/shavings in the bottom, they do like to bury themselves in it,there are lots of toys you can buy to keep them occupied,they are very inquisitive animals,my four soon discovered that if they jumped up and hung by their front feet in a line along the top edge of the tank that they could lift up the wire mesh lid with their noses and allow a couple to escape, a tin filled with their food on top of the lid soon stopped that little game though. They did come to realise that their food was in that tin and used to hang in a line along the edge waiting for me to open the tin, it's quite amusing to walk past and see a line of little multicolour rat bellys pressed against the side of the tank.

Check out your pet shop for toys, wooden ones are great as they like to gnaw. As for food you can buy a ready prepared 'rat mix' which has everything they need in it, they are known to just pick out certain things (like sunflower seeds)and leave other bits so keep an eye to make sure they are getting all they need, of course fresh water must be available at all times, if you have them in a tank you can rig up a sort of bottle harness that hooks over the side of the tank,we made one ourselves from an old coathanger (very blue peter!) or I'm sure that pet shops sell them. Of course if they are in a age that is easier as you can easily hook it on with the wire loops provided.

As I've mentioned they are very clean animals and will only need cleaning out about once a week depending on how many you have. I would recommend you bought them in pairs as they are sociable animals, mine liked to come out and sit on my shoulder and i have heard of people training them to do tricks although mine were not interested in that, obviously beneath them!

All in all i would thoroughly recommend you consider a rat when looking for a pet, i would have another one tomorrow ,unfortunately the other half is scared of them!!

Summary: Recommended pet for all ages