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faithfulfemme -> RE: Anyone ever have pet rats? (3/21/2008 2:38:44 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: dollparts85
I have two male dumbo rats that are brothers and share a cage...have all their life. (I've had them since they were about 3 weeks old...they're about maybe 9 months old now.) lately they have been fighting a lot. The one rat, Oreo, is a lot bigger than the other one. They always fight over food. They are both pretty large and over weight though so it's not like the other one is starving to death or anything LOL but the larger one, has been getting scabs on his neck from his brother bitting him. They squeak and roll around and stuff several times a day...they stop when I yell at them but then go right back at it. LOL Do you think it would be a good or bad idea for me to separate them? I know rats are very social animals and need companionship. I do not want them to get depressed or lonely. But I also do not want them to hurt each other.
When my children were growing up we always lived in rentals which didn't allow large pets. So, we tried lots of the little kinds of pets. Hampsters first, but their sight isn't good and they're nocturnal and will drive you nuts with the digging they do at night in their cages. Then mice, but they're soooo small it's difficult to establish a good relationship with them, and they always wind up biting because you scare them....
But the rats we tried were wonderful and they turned out to be good lil pets. However, we only got the females because the males were always toooo aggressive. We had 4 over the years, and i loved the little things to pieces. Nothing sweeter than to pull a tiny lil creature out of it's cage and have it play with you on the couch or on the bed. One lil female we had would play tag, and kinda sorta "wrestle" with your fingers.....her name was Scamper, and she was the first rat we got. When she died we took her down to the desert with us and buried her in a steel box at the Stone House, which was near the sand dam. Anyway, i digress.....
i would bet anything that your males have hit puberty and the testosterone is flowing a mile a minute, which most likely is the cause of all this aggressive behavior. Just my opinion, but i'd separate them into their own cages. Or divide the cage they have into two separate sections....
The females are probably getting tumors because of inbreeding. More and more people are buying snakes, the constrictors, which need rats for food, which in turn means there is a need for more "feeder" mice and rats. Consequently, the quality of the rats is most likely suffering because of the need for fast breeding turnaround.
i hope this helps, and the next rat you get, try a female from a different shop than the one where you got your female that developed tumors. Also a different shop from where you got the hairless rat. The breeders that they are buying from are spitting out feeder rats so fast, they are mutating at a fast rate of speed.
By the way, if you ever get a rat that bites, this is an uncorrectable problem and it needs to be returned to the shop where you purchased it.
Good luck, and enjoy these little creatures......they truly are lots of fun......
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