• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

My rat tower

R

rodney johnson

New member
I'm building the mondo rat tower for my ever growing colony. Just thought I'd show it off a little. FWIW: 1 male, 2 females, two litters of 11 and 10 about to the very large mouse stage and one litter of fuzzies already. RTB isn't big enough to want anything bigger than the young rat pups, but he certainly takes them when offered. :) The wire is 1/2" x 1" probably 14 ga and is kind of expensive at $2.89 a foot!! Just thought I'd show off all my hard work. I still have to cut the doors and figure out the "hinges" as well as put in some "ladders". All ends of the wires that I cut are hand filed flat and deburred - very time consuming. Thanks for looking. Rodney
1.0 Ghost
0.1 Snow
(0.0.1 RTB)
myrattower.jpg
 
Wow I saw things like those in pet stores down south from here, But what you have is really cool and ingenius. lol
 
I once had one similar...

...to that one. The only problem is the females insisted in having their litters up on the shelves and babies would be sticking through the shelves and outside, or had fallen out or through completely. I suggest putting something on the shelves to prevent this, and make sure it goes an inch or two up the sides.

Silvia
 
What a lovely home for your rats! They're lucky to have an owner who gives them a good, comfortable life and thinks of their welfare and entertainment rather than just thinking of them as food factories! :cheers:
 
Thanks Stacy! My favorite thing is building stuff. The wire cost me $60. To me that seemed like a lot, but to some folks it's not really that much. And I suppose compared to the cost of a commercial "tower" this big it's not really too much to pay. I am planning to get a little more wire for the last "shelf" and any additional doors that I might install. As of now, I have fashioned three "doors" left from a piece off the top. It has been hard work, but I've had fun building it. FWIW, I found the plastic "tray" for the bottom in the lawnmower shed out back of my house. I cleaned and sanitized it well first.
Rodney
 
One more thing,

they like to pee on the sides so make sure where ever you put the cage there is washable stuff next to and under the cage! It seemed I was always cleaning rat pee off of everything. You won't believe how far they can pee from that cage, especially when they are on the top self.

:grin01:

Silvia
 
sdmessmer said:
...to that one. The only problem is the females insisted in having their litters up on the shelves and babies would be sticking through the shelves and outside, or had fallen out or through completely. I suggest putting something on the shelves to prevent this, and make sure it goes an inch or two up the sides.

Silvia
Click to expand...

Yikes! :eek1: I had thought about that one, but didn't know for sure that it would happen. I can see how that would be a problem. I keep them in Sterlite containers now with some corrugated black pipe connecting them together. I had thought to locate some of the black tubing on each shelf just in case that happened. They seem to like to have their babies in those tubes also. They aren't the easiest to clean, but it's really cheap. I was also thinking about using some big pvc pipe that would be big enough to get the hand into for cleaning. It's pretty cheap also. Thanks for the "heads up" there Silvia!
Rodney
 
sdmessmer said:
they like to pee on the sides so make sure where ever you put the cage there is washable stuff next to and under the cage! It seemed I was always cleaning rat pee off of everything. You won't believe how far they can pee from that cage, especially when they are on the top self.

:grin01:

Silvia
Click to expand...

Yeah, and I thought male mice were bad. Actually they are really bad about that. I haven't noticed it as much with the rats, but it sounds like I'm about to find out! :) I'm really running out of room for snakes, but it's getting worse with the rodents. With rodents it seems you have either a "feast or famine" situation. I finally figured out to feed the babies off to keep the population down. I started out with my RTB then for a while I kept a Burmese (too nippy and eventually too big for sane persons :crazy02: ), but then I got corns and I had a use for the pinkies and don't HAVE to let them grow up. I've always just fed my reps whatever size rodent they could handle - sort of seems a waste to feed a three foot boa a pinkie! :) Watch out for falling PEE! :crazy02:
Rodney
 
It looks nice. They should be pretty happy in there. Tons of room to run and climb around. =)

Ah yes...they will pee along the top edges down the sides. And males seem expertly adept at somehow splattering the back wall behind my 2-story similar cage. However, I've found, if there's a bowl of some sort on the top shelf, they'd rather urinate/defecate in that and then sleep in it. Their choice, they made their nest so to speak. At least it saves me having to wipe the wall down as much. Even in an aquarium, they seem to have a "bathroom area" for the most part. The females seem to pay more mind to it than the males, who would rather instead drag their dripping genitals all over the edges of things. Blech.

And yes, they will invariably haul 90% of the bedding from the bottom somewhere up to the top to have their babies. Most of which seems to filter through the sides and onto the floor surrounding the base. Giving them loads of "big nesting stuff" seems to help this, such as hay, paper towel shreds, cotton fluff, etc.

I don't honestly know how expensive plexiglass or something like that is, but you may be able to rummage some pieces together to cover some walls. Or maybe your rats will be better than mine, who knows. ;)
 
princess said:
What a lovely home for your rats! They're lucky to have an owner who gives them a good, comfortable life and thinks of their welfare and entertainment rather than just thinking of them as food factories! :cheers:
Click to expand...

Thanks! Rats are cool too! :)
 
Taceas said:
It looks nice. They should be pretty happy in there. Tons of room to run and climb around. =)

Ah yes...they will pee along the top edges down the sides. And males seem expertly adept at somehow splattering the back wall behind my 2-story similar cage. However, I've found, if there's a bowl of some sort on the top shelf, they'd rather urinate/defecate in that and then sleep in it. Their choice, they made their nest so to speak. At least it saves me having to wipe the wall down as much. Even in an aquarium, they seem to have a "bathroom area" for the most part. The females seem to pay more mind to it than the males, who would rather instead drag their dripping genitals all over the edges of things. Blech.

And yes, they will invariably haul 90% of the bedding from the bottom somewhere up to the top to have their babies. Most of which seems to filter through the sides and onto the floor surrounding the base. Giving them loads of "big nesting stuff" seems to help this, such as hay, paper towel shreds, cotton fluff, etc.

I don't honestly know how expensive plexiglass or something like that is, but you may be able to rummage some pieces together to cover some walls. Or maybe your rats will be better than mine, who knows. ;)
Click to expand...

Hey Misty,
I don't know why I haven't noticed their mess more than the mice. It seems to me mice are worse, but then I may be "in for a big surprise" after I get everybody moved into their new home. I'm going to use the tubs to put more mice in since I really don't need the rats as much as the mice (to date: just the 3 ft RTB and two little 05 corns - the corns are the ones that need the pinkie and fuzzy mice right now - and the RTB seems happy with a couple full growns - it will probably be a while before he can tackle a full grown rat). I like to put that Timothy grass in there for them. I haven't actually seen them eat it, but I think they could if so inclined. They really like the peas in the hampster feed that I give them. They go RIGHT for that at the first! They seem to love to "rearrange" everything in their cage. I put some cheap plastic cat balls - no pun intended :santa: - in there for them to play with, and they just ate pieces off!! :eek1: I have some plexiglass (smoke color) that I found in a ditch once - probably blew off someones truck - and it's not too torn up that I was going to use to build a viv, but I may need to use a piece to keep the pee off the walls! :) I figure that I'll have to take the thing outside and hose it down pretty often to keep it clean, but other than getting everybody out and into a temporary enclosure, I don't forsee too much worries. Lucky it's light weight. I was REALLY surprised how soon my "runt" had her second litter. I ended up having to separate the two "mom's" as they kept stealing each others babies! I had heard that they would do that, but it was insane! :grin01: I began to feel worried for the babies and took one mommy and her litter out. She was the bigger of the two and I had intended to let her have the next litter, but she's not in with the big male, so . . . unless her offspring . . . I don't keep very good records, so I just go by size and can never remember when they were born. I think I still have time. Thanks for the comments. Rodney
 
Thats quite the tenement building you've got there!! All you need now is to get a fake fur coat, some cheesy gold chains and style a really bad comb over and charge them huge amounts in rent!! MWA HA HA HAAAA!!! Sorry, got carried away there... great job!!

I had considered trying to raise my own food, but after all of this pee business, i think ill leave it to teh professionals. Good luck!
 
you should have smaller

1/2 inch is not good,there is a thing that grows on the bottom of rats feet calledbumble foot which causes swelling,my sis has pet rats andthis has happened to them because the spacing was to far,we used reptile carpet to cover the spacings and no more bumble foot.
 
Eik.. I'm glad my rats can't see my computer screen / comprehend words and images. I think they would be quite jealous.

Hopefully no one takes a tumble though.. :sidestep:
 
I also built one similar a year or so ago. I kept it for all of 1-2 months. I got tired of trying to clean rat urine off of everything around it!

Also, keep an eye on your rat's feet! After I moved mine into their new cage, one of the females decided to become a toe biter! She bit several of the other rats toes off one night. I happened to catch her doing it the following morning. Needless to say, after that happened, the cage went out the door!
 
ballpythons18 said:
1/2 inch is not good,there is a thing that grows on the bottom of rats feet calledbumble foot which causes swelling,my sis has pet rats andthis has happened to them because the spacing was to far,we used reptile carpet to cover the spacings and no more bumble foot.
Click to expand...

I agree that the bar spacing that they walk on is a bit big. I would worry more about their feet slipping through the bars and getting stuck. I knew someone who had a rat break a leg because the floor spacing was too big. But, I wouldnt worry that much about bumblefoot. Bumblefoot is mainly caused by the repeated walking on their own urine. Thats easily remedied by cleaning the cage routinely. I dont like my rats walking on the bars so I just put down cloth bedding, keeps the cage cleaner longer, they like sleeping on it, and it prevents bumblefoot, which is more prevalent in males as they have more weight to them than females.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top