I'm really enjoying these six little lads. They seem to love being in the bigger cage too.
Pringle thinks that water bowls are fun even without anything to fish for.
Diggory has discovered the hazelnuts in their toybox.
Sparky enjoys the toybox too.
Bramble is discovering his potential as a mattress.
Hodge hasn't quite got the hang of these tunnel things!
Chumble is very relaxed about his new home.
Hodge is a little agouti ball of rexy cuteness, at 12 weeks old one of the youngest pair in my group of six young bucks. He keeps busy learning how his world works, following the lead of the bigger boys, but frequently gets things just that little bit wrong. Pringle sits and grooms my nails for me; Hodge nibbles a chunk out of my thumb nail. Diggory gives me sweet little kisses; Hodge nips my lip. Chumble whiffles gently in my ear; Hodge tries to dig his way in!
So it is no surprise to watch Hodge and Bramble in action this evening. Picture this - Bramble, an expert at jumping out of the rat playpen, is sitting on the edge of a box wiggling his bum and tensing for the upward leap. Hodge potters along to see what he is doing. Hodge puts his front paws on Bramble's back to get a better look, at which Bramble loses his balance and barely manages to convert his fall into a graceful leap to the floor. Hodge, obviously puzzled at the sudden disappearance of his friend, peers over the edge of the box. He slips and performs a full forward somersault to land slightly bemusedly on the ground.
That's my boy!
Pyramus has been steadily losing weight over the past few weeks, despite vet treatment and my best efforts to feed him up. He looked so ill and spiky that I was sure I was going to lose him at the weekend, so I gave him a small amount (0.4ml) of Calpol (children's paracetamol syrup) to tide him over until we could visit the vet. Wonderfully, it seemed to make him feel a little better almost straight away. He's actually put some weight back on.
Of course, I haven't treated whatever the original problem was, so it may just be that he's feeling well enough to drink enough, but it is just that little glimmer of hope.
Pyramus has put just a little more weight on.
Py continues to put weight on, but the gain has slowed. The girls are taking the opportunity to pick on him though. I watched Megan last night. Py was sitting on a small wooden ledge in the cage, gazing out of the door. Megan came up behind him, reached across from a shelf, got a big mouthful of his backside and gave a quick yank. Py found himself suddenly sitting on the floor. Not only that, but Meg went down after him to finish the job. I was quite shocked. I thought she was such a sweet little doe!
I think I may be in trouble on eBay again. I've bid on a cage that I don't really need, and no-one seems to be coming along to bid against me. Oops. At least it's here in Rugby.
These little boys really make me wonder what has happened to them. They are so loving, but so clingy and needy. I know they had a horrible bare cage when I collected them from their first mum, but she seemed so nice too.
Edison left us this evening, after spending most of the evening gasping for breath. I didn't think he would last long enough to get to the vet, thought he'd gone at one point, he stopped breathing for what seemed like a minute or so, then started again for another hour. I'm not at all surprised that he's gone, every breath has been a minor miracle for the past few weeks. My poor baby. I'm never sure if it's good to try and treat them when they get so bad. Maybe I should have had him pts instead? But he really didn't want to go.
This is why it's so important to breed rats to be healthy! This whole litter have been ill practically their whole lives, and it's so totally unfair on them!
I've put in an application for a pair of girls from a rescue, but I don't know if they'll let me have them. If it were me I'm not sure I would let them go to someone who had so many rats already and admits they're planning to breed. Still, if they do let me have them then I've helped, and if they don't then that's fewer mouths to feed, so I win either way.
They have a really detailed application form, so I asked if I could base my own one on it for next year. Covers all the bases.
Eddie leaving has left Archie on his own. That makes two lone rats. So I let Archie and Oliver spend some time together this evening. A bit of an anti-climax really. They happily sat next to one another on my lap, then ignored each other in the playpen. I'm going to try them in a neutral cage tomorrow evening, but not de-commission their cages until I'm sure it will work. I can't afford anything to stress Archie, as he's not in very good health at all.
I realised today that it's ages since Rosie has tried to bite me. She has been a real sweetie lately.
The six young lads are getting to the squabblesome age right now. I'm not sure who will end up as alpha rat. The main fighters are Sparky, Chumble and Diggory. Hodge gets caught up in it occasionally, Pringle less so, Bramble seems to be completely above it all. Wonder if he's already alpha, or happy to be bottom of the pile? He doesn't seem like a low ranker.
Well, Bramble is definitely the alpha. They were gnawing their way into some walnuts this evening in the playpen, when a scuffle broke out over one that was open. Once Bramble had it all fighting stopped. Impressive.
Archie and Olly are in the same cage. The photo is misleading, as they're avoiding each other most of the time, but they are cohabiting.
Archie and Oliver are still ignoring one another, but from a smaller distance. They're currently both in the hammock, but with their backs to one another.
Oliver and Archie we snuggled up together in the hammock this morning. Success!
Nearly died laughing last night.
My son Joe noticed that one of the young boys' water bottles was almost empty, so took it to refill. While he was in the kitchen, the youngsters managed to get the bottle clip wire off the cage and Bramble bounced off with it.
When Joe returned with the bottle, he then had to open the cage to get the wire back. While he chased Bramble, the other five boys swarmed out of the door. I'm sure he put at least 20 rats back into the cage.
Then comes the problem of trying to affix the bottle to the cage while the rats try to steal the wire again and Joe tries not to catch any paws.
It's much funnier when you're watching someone else struggling, isn't it?
(Joe has now spoilt their fun by crimping the wires onto the cage with a pair of pliers.)
I picked up the eBay cage from Onley this evening. It's a metal parrot cage, in absolutely perfect condition, superb value. Should fit five according to the cage calculator; fractionally too small to fit six. I got a bit lost in Onley Park though. Multimap shows two roads as joining onto the main road when they don't, and the whole estate has one series of numbers which doesn't flow logically.
My first job was to take the cage apart, so I can store it until my next intros. Hopefully between Chester, Pickle and a pair of rescue kittens.
I've made a shelf to go in the new cage using one of the panels left from my old aviary. It already has two shelves which each go just under 1/3 of the way across the cage. The one I've made goes a little over 2/3, so if I put this on one side and a smaller one on the other side, there's no way they can fall the full height of the cage. Then there's still space for corner shelves too. Got to get some white metal paint to touch up the shelf where I cut it. Or maybe some cream paint so I can paint it to match the cage.
This cage won't go rusty like my previous metal one did. The difference in the quality of this and the old aviary is incredible. I'm not sure yet whether to use the stand with it. It would be useful to be able to store things underneath, but would make any cage stacked on top a little high.
Still waiting to be homechecked so I can take a couple of rescue girls. Don't know why I put my name down for them, but now I have I'm impatient. Mind you, it's better now if I don't get them until after the next show, or I'd then be breaking quarantine if I took any rats there and I really want to take some of my boys along.
I'm being homechecked on Monday, but it looks like I may be having three girls instead of two, as there are just three left.
I took Doppler to be put to sleep today. I gave them breakfast and he was gasping for breath and panicking again. It's just wasn't fair on him. He'd been having gasping fits for over a month and it wasn't getting better. So I phoned the vets and took him in on my way to work. It's a good job it's a half hour walk to work, it gave me a chance to grieve on the way. I feel I failed him.
Took myself to the National Fancy Rat Society seminar and AGM today. Really interesting talks on breeding by Ann Storey and feeding by Alison Campbell. Great to see everyone.
All done now. My home checker was someone I already know - I meet her at the vets every now and then. It was a nice visit - I almost forgot why she was here. We just chatted and made a fuss of the rats. It seems the girls are well and have had no outside contact for three weeks, so no quarantine problems bringing them straight in. I still don't know what colour the remaining three are though, and neither did my homechecker. Just need to wait again now.
Olly's starting to look old and tired. It's worrying that Archie has only recently lost a cage mate, been introduced to Oliver, and now may lose his new friend.
I've got a nice shelf cut for the new metal cage out of one of the old aviary panels, all nicely painted and ready.
I wonder what colour they will be? The photo shows black hooded, brown (agouti?) hooded, beige hooded (silver fawn, buff?), maybe champagne hooded and white (PEW or himi?). So some combination of those. Names? Poppet, Posy, Pixie, Pixel, Pandora. I seem to be stuck on 'P'. Maybe I need to meet them first?
The MRC Christmas show is on tomorrow. Going to be fun! I've entered Bramble, Sparky and Diggory. The other three young lads will go with me, Pringle so he's not left on his own, Chumble and Hodge so tabirat can have a look at them. I've got my Christmas present early - a sat nav - so I can play with that too. I've got to go over to Northampton to pick up a friend, then back to Brum for the show. Plenty of scope for navigation.
Meg was very busy during playtime tonight. I've put a pile of sticks in their toybox, about 5" long - the remains of a wood and wire bridge that they young boys had. Meg was collecting up all the sticks to put inside their box. The real killer was that every now and then she tried to take a stick in through a hole while carrying it by the middle, and found it wouldn't fit through the hole.
Sparky has been a right hormonal pain in the bum tonight. Quite literally for some of his cagemates. I think he needs watching.
Last modified: Sunday, 02-Dec-2007 11:56:18 GMT
