rats?

[Deleted]

i was just curious, so i was browsing kijiji today, and there are quite a few free rats/mice.

i tried breeding mice, but that turned out horribly, since i didn't really have a set up for them, so i just used cages, which didn't work out.
and they smelled horribly. do rats smell less?

i found an ad selling racks, so i was thinking of getting a rack. if my parents would let me try to breed mice/rats again.

i have to see if my male is any good with killing mice, but i think he might. so I'm going to be picking up a mouse to see if he's good at it.

[smallfooties]

hi there,
rats don't smell as bad as mice...
rats have more control of where they do their toilet business... you can actually train them to use the litter box...
my rats never smelt bad unless you don't clean their homes regularly... but they smell more like pop corn... lol...
does your fuzzy eat dead mice? if he does then you can try to see if he would kill a live one...
if he doesn't then you would want to work up towards it?
like feeding him dead baby rats first...
i don't know what your experience is with feeding whole prey... so i'm sorry if i sound presumptuous...
or you could try a dead mouse and just tie it to a stick where you can wriggle it infront of your fuzzy and observe how he reacts to it? kinda like a cat teaser toy...

PS: oops just saw you're a raw feeder so you probably have been feeding whole preys to your fuzzies longer than i have! oops! sorry... just ignore me...

[Heather]

Please only allow your fuzzes to hunt mice, don't think for a moment that a solo ferret can handle a full grown rat. You will have to use a CO2 chamber for the rats. I had allowed my guys (awesome hunters by the way) to hunt rats, until I got a rat that was too large for my large male fuzz (4.5 lbs) to dispatch cleanly. After that episode, I've always allowed my supplier to kill off and freeze the rats. No creature diserves to suffer to be food and no ferret needs to be injured when hunting. JMO
ciao

[smallfooties]

-smacks my wrist-

[Heather]

Don't be...your advice is sound for mice...just not rats Mice can be aggressive too, but a good hunter can dispatch them quickly and cleanly without any fuss. Rats are hugely aggressive when cornered and could easily injure a ferret (hunting ferrets receive injuries frequently when hunting in the warrens). We do not set up tunnels and tubes for our ferrets to hunt in as they would in the wild or when they're being used as vermin hunters. Out in the open our guys are very vulnerable to injuries It's not how they're supposed to hunt, it's how we make them hunt. A ferret could easily take on a rat in a tunnel but not in the open, the rat then has the advantage in the open.
ciao

[smallfooties]

by making mistakes, one can only learn to improve both knowledge and skills.
i have to say... i didn't think about the rats' size.. i forgot they could grow quite big... i only had the frozen baby rats in my mind... thank you for pointing this out...

[Deleted]

oh no, sorry. i didn't to come off as that i would allow him to hunt rats. oh dear. that would be a disaster. i meant that i might breed the rats and CO2 them so they could get another protein source. mice stink horribly, that's why i was wondering about rats.

he does seem have to the characteristics of killing, when he plays with his toys, so i think I'm going to pick up a hopper for him to see.

[smallfooties]

what's a hopper?

[Deleted]

like a baby mouse. it's about 2 weeks old i think. they move around more, so it might catch his interest, and probably easier to kill.

[smallfooties]

don't know man... Heather says mice can do damage too... so i don't know about baby mice if they already have claws and teeth!
Wonder what the more experienced members here think...
there's always the cat teaser method? -shrugs-
I would be interested in this thread... because i'm also working towards feeding Pabs live prey.

[goingpostal]

Honestly IME a hopper mouse is kind of hard for a ferret to catch and kill because they are so small and all over the place, my hunter female has problems with that size.

[Deleted]

really? then what size should i get?

[Heather]

I started Minion with the one size down from an adult. Minion is 5 months old (just got back from the vet today and he's weighing in at 3lbs 7 oz to give you an idea as to size). He did very well on that size. Bungled the first one and got bit, but he didn't make the same mistake twice. He then killed the next 5 without any difficulty.
ciao

[goingpostal]

Seems easiest on weanling size 3-4 weeks. Although not sure if you have a co2 setup ready if he doesn't kill it or the guts to kill it yourself. You could always try a live pinkie, that's the only live most of mine see since they are such poor hunters.

[Deleted]

so a weaned mouse would be the best?
punk, my male, i haven't tried him for hunting yet, is over 3 pounds. he's 8 months now.

i haven't got a CO2 system yet, but I'll see if i can talk my parents into letting me breed rats since they smell less. if i can, then i definitely will get a set up for that. but i have done cervical dislocation on a few mice, since my girls were terrible at hunting.

i still have my old superpet cage, can i use that for breeding rats? or are the bars too big?