I've got two male rats. I need help?

Question

They're about 7-8 months old. They don't really use the litter box. They just seem to ignore it. I find wet spots everywhere and when I carry them they tend to do their business on me (ugh). It took my hamster just 2 days to get the idea. How long will it take them??

I carried them numerous times and had to wait for them to finish pooping cuz they do lots, I guess they get scared. (I've had to carry them over the toilet and just wait.lol) --- How can I stop this?

Also I can't find where exactly they tend to do their business. My hammy would make circles and warn us.... but my rats seem to just let it out. heelp

Answer 1

Some rats can be litter box trained and some cannot. In general, females tend to be more fastidious in their toilet habits. (My girls usually use one corner on the bottom floor as a toilet but my boys tend to live like bachelors and go anywhere they want.)

Remember that males mark, meaning that they dribble a little urine when they are walking about. That is different (in terms of quantity) from simply peeing everywhere. My girls are always able to be out of the cage and as long as I left the cage door open, they would go back in to the potty floor to pee. My boys always mark so I had to adjust how I gave them out-of-cage time to accommodate that.

Answer 2

well just keep trying my ones use to take all the litter out and store food in it and they sometimes weeed on me but they did stop but i could never litter train them unfortunattly soz i couldnt help you but i hope you train them in the end and good luck!!!!!!!! =)

Answer 3

thats the same with my little ruby she i tooo try to toilet train but she ignores it im not sure how your going to teach yours but good luck

=D

Answer 4

Sometimes with rats and age it tends to be hard to get them to do what you want. I have 17 female rats so I know what your going through. I am using a cat litter box that I put carefresh bedding in. When I find p**p balls I scoop them up in a klenex and put them in the litter box. Im still finding some puddles and some piles of p**p but not as much as before. Some rats are stubborn and will never do it but some will succumb and go in the litter box. Theres no correct answer for this question but doing what I am doing will help some with the raisins and puddles. Here is some more info on this:

Clean your cage. Set aside some used bedding, but the cage needs to be cleaned really well. Use an enzyme product to clean the urine and deodorize, or you can use stuff you have around the house. (Wash it thoroughly. Then spray down with hydrogen peroxide. Let that air dry. Spray down with white vinegar and let that air dry.) Once the cage is thoroughly clean, sanitized, and deodorized, put fresh bedding in the cage.

  

Step 2:

Set up your potty. If you have multiple pet rats, you will want a good-sized potty so that more than one rat can use it at a time. The litter or bedding you use should be very different from the bedding in the cage. If you use chips for bedding, then use a paper product for litter, or vise versa. Either way, it should be very different. Top it with the dirty bedding that you set aside from cleaning.

Step 3:

Clean your rat cage. Clean the cage often, but leave the litter pan dirty. This will help your rats to realize that they aren't supposed to use their bedding, but they are supposed to use the potty. You must sanatize and deodorize the cage each time you clean it. The more you clean it, the easier it will be to potty train your pet rats.

Step 4:

After four or five months, clean the potty. After your pet rats have gotten a good handle on using the potty you can then clean it. At first, just dump it and add clean litter. Then you can dump it and wash it. After awhile you will be able to sanitize it and deodorize it as well, but you want to wait a long time to make sure that your rats have the hang of it. If it doesn't look like a good place to go and doesn't smell like a place to go, then they won't go there, so don't be too clean!

Step 5:

Always bring a potty. If you travel with your pet rats or you get them out and let them play, then you should bring your potty trained rat a potty or they will be concerned. This is especially true if they are out and about for a long time. Put the potty somewhere easily accessible.

Rats are smart and most of them will get the hang of this in three or four months. However, you have to be patient for them; unlike other animals, pet rats don't tend to go to the bathroom in a single corner of their cage. Some will use their nest just as much as a different corner. I even had one rat who would move hers from one floor to another because she had decided she was sleeping in the place she used to go. You have to be patient and you can teach pet rats to use a litter box. Just be forgiving and know that it will take time.