Saw my first wild rats on Saturday evening. Was over at some friends’ house that live on a farm and have chickens and saw two beautiful ‘agouti cuties’ by their hen house. They both looked pretty large, similar size to my boys I reckon, so I guess they’re pretty healthy.

Of course, my friends weren’t quite so excited by me spotting them but I thought they were lovely!!

Beau bit me! Pretty hard - he definitely meant it. I was cleaning the boys out Monday afternoon and was halfway through putting the bedding back in the cage when beau jumped in, so I put my hand in take him out and he turned round and bit me. It bled a lot, so I wrapped it up with some micropore as I had to finish their cage then Charlie decided to bite my plaster - why do they do that??! - so there I was with a sore finger attempting to hang up hammocks with Charlie chewing on the plaster.

I have to admit I was shocked at Beau. As you know he’s a pretty hormonal hooligan and isn’t always thay nice to his cage mates and not cuddly or people orientated at all, but he’s never bitten. Apart from my ankles when I have my slippers on, but that’s just cheeky nibbles. I have decided I definitely need to speak to the vets about de-nadding him. I think it will make him a happier, more relaxed boy and will make life easier for his cage mates. They are definitely nervous of him during free-range time. I’m just a bit worried about him having the op - I seriously doubt my vets have ever castrated a rat before and I’ve been reading that post-op abbcesses are fairly common after rat castrates and he seems quite prone to them. They did do a good job with Sugar and Tink though, so I shall just have to trust them.

First share a quick cuppa (this is Luke licking out my mug):

Then have a snooze in those lovely things called sleeves (This is definitely Charlie and I think Rupert):

As promised - the pic of the mess the girls made with the wound powder:

And no, it doesn’t help that i’m such a scruff bag and leave stuff lying around. That small area of desk is a bit tider now as I had to move stuff to clean up!

No, the girls haven’t suddenly got style conscious, they’re just being their usual destructive selves.

I have (had) a little tub of antiseptic wound powder on my desk in the rat room. It’s very good stuff that you can just dab a little of on a wound and it helps dry up the wound and aids healing. Treacle and Sugar decided the tub looked interesting and chewed it. And chewed it. And then chewed it some more. By this point there is no bottom to the tub and most of the powder is on the table and assorted bad rats. I was the other side of the partition cleaning out the aviary so missed all this. By the time I noticed it was too late. Treacle and Sugar in particular had dainty white noses and patches on their fur and when I picked them up they left a powdery trail across my jumper.

I do have a photo of the mess they made but it’s on my phone. I will upload it and put it on here later. Horrible gits! Just as well I love them really.

It seems only yesterday I vowed to get more involved with the ratty show scene and became a member of the NFRS and the SRC but i’ve recently had renewal reminders for both of them (which reminds me, I must do the SRC one!) and I have managed to get to a grand total of 1 show in that time! Transport is just impossible with the car in the state it’s in and there isn’t any public transport, so i’m stuck up here at the edge of the world.

I have re-newed my memberships though, both in the hope of getting a new car soon and because I think there are definite benefits, mainly the newsletters and the NFRS forum. I am really very impressed with the NFRS forum. It’s still fairly small, is open to members only and everyone is generally very tolerant with none of the all too common bitching found on many public forums. There is a fantatsic amount of information to be found from looking through the posts, with lots of it coming from long established, experienced fanciers and the newer members ask questions about things such as breeding, nutrition and healthcare that interest me as a newbie. The newsletters that both clubs produce are also very informative for both breeders and pet owners. The SRC keeps asking for articles and I would love to submit something but not sure what about yet!

The other club I am a sort of member of is the Marked Fancy Rat Club. This is more aimed at breeders (of marked rats obviously) than pet owners. It’s not accepting memberships yet, but it does have a forum which it has opened to those that want to join the club, which is small but very informative. This club will have the option of an online membership which only costs £2.50 where all newsletters etc are received electronically. I am interested in the marked rat club as I love marked rats and if I do ever get into breeding I would like it to be marked rats, so I though I may as well start learning early!!

So, I would say, if you are interested in rats and want to learn more or are interested in showing, then look for a rat club in your area.

Sugar has gone down to 452g. Hooray. They have had nearly all their fresh food cut out completely, apart from a bit of veg a couple of times a week. None of them are looking worse for it, I think it’s because the weather’s warmer, they don’t need to use up energy keeping warm, so are maintaining their body weight fine.

Saffron gave us a scare last week. I went out on Monday to let them out and she came out absoloutely covered in (hopefully) poryphrin. All browny / purple round her head and nose and the inside of her feet where she’d been cleaning herself. She was also really skinny across her back and had seemed to have forgotten how to use the water bottle! I put a water bowl in for them and she splashed about in that quite happy and was a lot better on Tuesday, all clean again and just a wee bit skinny across her back and then by Wednesday was totally back to normal and has been fine ever since. I’m not sure what caused it. I’m wondering if it was actually blood and she’d had a nose bleed or smething. I noticed on Tuesday that Fudge had a cm long gash on her side so I wonder if the two of them had been fighting and Saffron had fallen off something. Fingers crossed she remains fine.

because Sugar has so far managed to lose not a single gram. Bless her.

The Alpha Herbal food finally arrived and is now the base of the shunamite mix and they seem to really like it. Their bowls are empty in the evenings and because of the lack of fresh food i’ve had to put another bowl in the boys cage as they’re eating more dry food.

I think the alpha herbal is a better mix as a ‘kidney friendly’ diet for Treacle and Charlotte. As rats get older most of them have a degree of kidney failure. One way that has been suggested of controlling this is controlling the protein intake by reducing it and providing digestible protein such as eggs and fish. Both Treacle and Charlotte are about 20 months now which is classed as ‘old’ so even though neither of them are showing symptoms I thought it would be good for them to modify the diet. It’s not exactly as recommended in the Scuttling Gourmet book which is detailed here: Kidney friendly rat diet but I do have the recommended cereals in my mix and the dog kibble I use is a fish and rice one (from James Wellbeloved). My next mix will contain the higher proportion of salt crackers and I will need to get some egg noodles. I am not adding the extras at the moment as they are not recommended for younger rats, but I will get some nature diet lite to give them more regularly. Fingers crossed it will help prolong the lives of my two old ladies.  

The ratties are all on a diet. And it’s mostly Sugar’s fault! Well, really it’s my fault for letting Sugar get so fat. She is very rotund and even though she is perfectly healthy, it’s not good for rats (just like everything else!) to be too overweight. I weighed her yesterday and she is 477g. She could probably lose 75 - 100g and be perfectly fine.

The diet is being accomplished by cutting down on the fresh food. Rather than getting cooked carbs every day they’re only getting them 2 - 3 times a week and they’re getting just veg the other days. I’ve ordered a sack of Alpha Herbal rabbit food to use as the base for their Shunamite, which is lower in fat than the rat food mix that is the current base, so hopefully that will help. I will try and remember to weigh her about once a week and I will keep you posted.

…. so they can snuggle together in a big heap like this: (there are at least 7 girlies in that pile)