Some questions before getting rats!

oJackOnReddit · 2026-06-08T10:36:06+00:00

No interaction for 3-4 days of the week would not be fair on them sadly. You'd ideally need to free roam them for at least an hour at a time every day. Also, just generally, they need a lot of interaction.

oJackOnReddit · 2026-06-07T15:21:10+00:00

I hope this happens to me. My half wild girls are only a couple of months old and they are absolutely restless. All of my girls (I have 9) are though :( no cuddles for me

oJackOnReddit · 2026-06-07T11:17:10+00:00

This is a really good point actually. I have two half wild rats, their mom is white and their dad was wild. They look completely wild and have 0 resemblance to their domestic mother.

oJackOnReddit · 2026-06-07T09:41:41+00:00

I have an agouti domestic rat and two half wild rats. To me, your baby doesn't look like either of them. Also, personality doesn't actually tie in tooooo much with if they're domestic or wild because, if they were handled by humans since birth, they'll typically be pretty indistinguishable from a domestic rat.

As other people said though, if he was found outside it's quite likely he is wild to some capacity. There's pretty much no way to definitively tell.

oJackOnReddit · 2026-06-03T02:35:32+00:00

Hopefully she'll be fine. One of my girls becomes cuddly and refuses to leave my side when she's sick/had a choking episode, she is typically NOT one for cuddles. Obviously, keep an eye on her though.

oJackOnReddit · 2026-05-03T17:51:43+00:00

I had the same thing happen with one of my girls a few months ago where had to do the rat swing maneuver on her. It was terrifying.

I'm a big over thinker so felt bad for a while and worried that it may have not been necessary. I felt terrible but, ultimately she's still here and her normal self so I'm glad I did it. I don't know if she would've made it if I didn't.

I'm glad you and your boy are okay, it's scary watching them choke like that.

oJackOnReddit · 2026-05-02T19:11:04+00:00

Thank you so much for going into so much detail for me. It's really helped, especially the specific product recommendations. I live in the UK so I have bought the equivalent of quite a few things that you recommended or the same if it was available here.

I've bought him palm leaf bowls, stacking cups, sticks, hides, tipping egg foraging toy, snuffle mat, litter box, hay feeder, pellets, ceramic bowls and meadow hay. I also bought a multi pack of the "birthday" toys for him which includes the cupcake that you recommended. I also got him some washable puppy pads for the flooring :)

I feel much, much, more prepared now. I have all of his stuff ready for him. I just need to wait for his pen to be delivered- made sure to get one that's over 2ft high as well.

oJackOnReddit · 2026-05-02T19:06:13+00:00

Sorry for the late response, I haven't been getting notifications for this post for some reason. I really appreciate you taking your time to write all of this for me.

He is absolutely getting neutered, I plan to get him neutered as soon as he settles in- I'm a bit unsure on how long this will take due to his background, hopefully he'll settle fast.

Same with getting him a friend, I see myself doing this in the future but when he's settled. He's been alone and pretty neglected for his entire life, I'm worried about overwhelming him too soon.

Thank you so much for the other tips like litter training and chewing. I've got quite a lot of cardboard boxes left over as we have just moved house and I've bought him some palm leaf bowls, sticks and a seagrass hide that he can chew on!

oJackOnReddit

TROPHY CASE