Pet rat cage enrichment is vitally important for your rats’ mental health. Make your rats’ home intellectually stimulating by creating novelty. Making minor changes inside their cage on an almost daily basis is the best way to keep your rats’ brains active. This can be as simple as moving their boxes and hammocks to different locations in their cage. Rotating through your collection of cage accessories and toys also really helps liven up their environment.
If you’re doing your weekly cage cleaning, right there you’re helping your rats not only by cleaning their cage but also by giving them a totally new environment. After a day or two in their freshly cleaned cage, start swapping out toys, games, puzzles and accessories each day of the week up until their next cage cleaning.
Ideas and tools for creating pet rat cage enrichment
Foraging Toys
Empty toilet paper rolls are an easy object to make into many different toys for your rats. It’s amazing the many ways you can use these little cardboard tubes. Here are just a few ways to make toys out of empty toilet paper rolls:
- Tubes rolled up inside tubes (from therabbithouse.com)
- Classic treat ball
- Toilet paper tubes in a box
- Barrel
- Even more toilet paper tube ideas (from exoticanimalsupplies.com)
SAFETY PRECAUTION: The glue used for toilet paper tubes is not something you want your rats to eat. If you find they’re gnawing on and possibly even consuming the cardboard, stop using them. Instead, try another cage enrichment idea.
Other fun foraging ideas
- Food puzzles
- Treat dispensers
- Digging box: Place safe-to-use dirt inside a cardboard box. Your rats will love playing, digging and burrowing in it. You can even hide a few treats underneath the soil. A safe substrate to use is Zoo Med Eco Earth Compressed Coconut Fiber.
- Rats enjoy it when you scatter their food throughout their cage rather than leaving it all in a bowl or dish. When you hide their regular food, it gives your rats something to keep them occupied throughout the day. The more difficult it is to find the food, the better. (Although, start out easy and build up to more complex hiding places.) They love a good scavenger hunt for food.
- You can also hide a treat in a couple of places in their cage. Place it in an out of the way spot so they won’t find it right away. They love finding surprises.
It’s fun to check out bird toys since they usually work well for our rats. For example, foragingforparrots.com has a myriad of wonderful, creative suggestions for foraging toys. Here are a few of my favorites:
- Wiffle ball forager
- Rice cake on a string – I suggest using mini-rice cakes (instead of full-size) so they don’t eat too much.
- Foraging mat – For this one, you’ll have to see how your rats do with the plastic. If they chew and eat it, use a sisal mat instead.
- Foraging box
- Foraging bowl
- Brown bag piñata
SAFETY PRECAUTIONS: 1) Keep in mind that snacks and treats should be in small proportions. You want to make sure your rats are primarily eating high quality kibble or lab blocks. There kibble should be roughly 80% of all the food they consume. 2) When using string to tie dangling objects from the cage top, be aware that rats can easily get string wrapped around their throats or limbs. This can even result in death. One thing that can help prevent injury is to make sure to tie any knots tightly so they can’t come undone. Rats could easily get their arm or leg caught in a loosened knot. Also, make sure any strings hanging from the top don’t touch the cage floor. If you had a long string that was able to reach the cage floor and then some, that would also be a sure way for a rat to get tangled up and injured.
Chew Toys
Rats love to chew!
- Bamboo chews
- Willow sticks are wonderful: Pretzels (short twigs)
- Mega Munch (long sticks)
- Here’s a novel idea: a chewable book!
Cage Accessories
- Wheels
- Ladders
- Add a shelf: This one is suitable for larger cages
- Wire basket/shelf – You can also make a DIY basket-shelf by purchasing a plastic basket from the Dollar Tree (Note – online they sell these baskets in bulk. In their stores you can buy them individually.)
Once you start rotating your collection of the fun items listed above, you’ll notice your rats are more fulfilled and satisfied by their environment. Besides the toys, accessories and games, don’t forget to add a new hammock or box, move their boxes around and provide plenty of bedding. The above ideas are just a few of the many ways you can provide extra enrichment for your rats.
On a final note, there are exceptions to changing up your rats’ cage regularly. If your rats are elderly, sick or even super shy, novelty may not be a pleasant experience for them. Always tailor whatever you do to your rats’ personalities and preferences.
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