no rat pictures yet, but...

[ratcreature]

I've just come back from getting my three baby rats, who are tiny and adorable. They are still a bit shy, mostly hiding in one of their tubes, but they've already found the food and water and are coming out to grab bits of food only to hide again to eat it. So they are not easy to photograph yet, but starting to settle in.

Comments

[reginagiraffe]

New ratty babies! Yay!

Congratulations on your new arrivals!

[ratcreature]

Thanks! It's really nice to have company again. And when I fetched the rats from the hobby breeder, I met her and saw her other rats, and they seemed friendly, and healthy, so that was great. (Before I've only talked via email.) Right now they are tiny, the smallest not even 80g yet.

[reginagiraffe]

*converts*

Eeeeee! Less than 3 ounces!

How many grams are normal adults? 300?

I used to work with a researcher who was trying to breed a strain of diabetic rats. They were fed a high-sugar diet and those guys were as much as a kilo! They looked like white furry footballs (American).

[ratcreature]

300g would be okay for female rats, male rats get much heavier as they get older. Though they have considerable range, but 450-650g is fairly normal.

[gchick]

Yay! Congratulations and welcome to the new babies!

[ratcreature]

Thanks!

[parhelion]

Hurrah, rat babies! Are they too young to be displaying their individual quirks yet or are you getting some notions of what they'll be like as adults?

[ratcreature]

Well, I haven't really known them long enough to tell anything. They haven't even explored all levels of their cage yet. And they are tame and socialized with human contact of course, but right now they are not used to me specifically yet, and also still wary of the new surroundings. So I can't start to interact much with them until they've settled in some more and feel more secure within thier new cage. I mean, coming from a breeder they are not traumatized and skittish as pet store rats would be, but of course right now everything is still scary.

[kass]

Yay, baby rats!

[ratcreature]

They are very adorable. Well, when you see them, for now they mostly are sitting in the middle of one of the plastic tubes, but then they probably miss their mom and the familiar pack and are in a strange place on their own, so that's quite understandable. Though one of them seems to be an intrepid explorer and already dared leaving the level I put them on and went into some of the other parts of the cage, while the other two have mostly stayed put.

[reginagiraffe]

He needs to be "Columbus"! *g*

[ratcreature]

Heh. I find names with more than two syllables inconvenient for pets though.

[nrrrdy-grrrl.livejournal.com]

Baby rats ARE adorable- their squirminess delights me. Congrats!

[ratcreature]

Thanks! I will post photos as soon as they feel more secure and show themselves enough to have pictures taken. :D

[nrrrdy-grrrl.livejournal.com]

Aw! Those shy little sausages!

[hugglewolf.livejournal.com]

That's great news! Too soon for names?

[ratcreature]

Not really too early but I'm somehow still waffling. The woman I got them from names her litters alphabetically (one litter all A-names, then Bs and so on), so right now they go by Moe, Nemo and Noah, but I dislike the names Moe (I can't help but think of the three Stooges) and Nemo, so I'm likely going to rename at least two, but I am still somehow undecided. The absence of pressure to have to pick something already to put in the contract didn't help, LOL. I suck at naming pets.

[caiusmajor.livejournal.com]

BABY RATS! :D :D :D

--incidentally. I enjoy your tales of your rats and I am wondering how it works to have rats and comics at the same time. Do you have to keep the rats away from the comics at all times?

[ratcreature]

Yeah, if ou want to keep the comics intact, you can't let the rats reach them. I once didn't block access to a shelf well enough, and wasn't quick enough to find where the rat had vanished behind (not until I located the gnawing sounds) and it chewed on some hardcover editions. I'm just glad they didn't get to the signed (with with sketches!) comics that were also in that shelf much. Most of the comics in the room with my rats are either behind doors or in boxes. Any room in which rats run around has to be rat safe, and anything within reach will be chewed (and marked with pee).

Rats will do damage, but then most pets do, and at least you can keep rats just to one room and supervise their play time. My sister's cat took revenge on her stuff when she felt slighted and my sister wasn't at home, and ruined her handwoven oriental rug, peed on her bed sometimes, and dragged animal corpses in from outside too. And at least the cat's victim were fresh, her dog once dug up a half rotten corpse of something, and smeared that all over.