we have 3 male rats and there so loving, comicle and clever etc
they do pong abit if not cleaned out after 3 days.
ours come to us when out playing if you call their names

hiya, i have 19 rats who only start smelling a little after a week, what substrate do you use out of curiosity?

im using the wood based cat litter
omg 19 rats

i have a few more than 19 and when i switched to bedmax i trialled on cage with 7 bucks in - they were ponging abit after 2 weeks.

They do get cleaned out weekly i hasten to add i was just testing the bedmax lol

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Jacky and the pet gang

in regards to wood based litter, prob why they are smelling after that amount of time lol, plus it isnt nice for rat lungs or liver either. best substrate ive found between 40 rats and a rodent room is megazorb. after that its vetbed with daily poo pickings up to replace the substrate, vetbed as a cage substrate replaceent is great!

i can give you a good opinion as i have both

degus r simply giant gerbils but slightly more tame
rats are very friendly and love human companionship

and so id suggest either!!

if u liked ur gerbils go for degus
if ur looking for something tamer then rats

hope tht helped

xxxx

Thanks for everyone's help, I do love my gerbils as they're really cute, but I definetly want something much tamer, so as pretty as degu's are, I think the rats are going to win a new home!

i found megazorb very messy and extreemely dusty - it also stank. There is no conclusive up to date proof that wood shavings causes any damage to rats/rodents. PLease remember when most of the tests were done many years ago, rats were mostly kept in tanks with little ventillation.


You can't beat friendly rats as pets - but then i do have a gerbil phobia so im probably biased against the degu lol

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Jacky and the pet gang

true in terms of research, but im just going off experience.
plus shavings/sawdust irritate my lungs ans set off my asthma within the first 5 minutes of messng with it, i wouldnt really like to live on it 24/7 being a rat or other small animal, breathing it in all the time.
my friend was always at the vets with her first 3 boys(i had the other 4 from the litter, kept on bedxcel then aubiose,then magazorb) and when she changed from shavings(she used them for her gerbils too) to bedxcel(cardboard squares) and since then has only had a flare up in one of the boys in over a year.
i can only go on what ive seen and experienced.
megazorb is very messy, but in the last few months its changed, its in bigger pieces, and paler in colur with practically no odour or dust, alot of people have noticed it on here www.fancyrats.co.uk

substrate is very much a personal thing i think. It is what suites both you and your rats that counts. But i would never use sawdust! lol

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Jacky and the pet gang