Rat commune

[farla]

So who knows rats? I want to know if I can combine multiple rats into one happy family if they're going outdoors and will have every opportunity to stake out new territory, or if I need to stick to ones that are already friends. Also, what's a good size for a rat group?

Comments

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

I've never had more than two at a time, and they were kept indoors. Sorry!

But that sounds like an adorable project!

[farla.livejournal.com]

It'll probably be less adorable in practice, since the rats last time mostly just slept all day out of sight.

[wonsab.livejournal.com]

My friend's had a group of three rats for a while now. She says that rats of the same sex get along alright, but that it's easiest to introduce females and younger rats.

She'd also like to know what you mean by "outdoors."

[farla.livejournal.com]

Well, the idea of this is that we'll be adopting older rats. So I guess we should go with girls? Mom's worried this will lead to wild boys showing up though.

And, uh, outdoors outdoors. They're going by the chicken enclosure. There's a huge pile of leaves that the rats before made a nest in and seemed pretty happy with. The plan is to get rats and let them die of old age, so I want to be able to introduce new rats so there's never a point where there's just one lone rat. However, rat introduction schemes seem to hinge on a final step of sticking both in one cage to fight until they get used to each other, while I need these rats to stick around willingly - I mean, I assume I can recapture them pretty easily for initial introductions, but they're not going to be in a cage.

[(Anonymous)]

That's a really interesting scenario. I've only dealt with indoor rats before. Females will be easiest to introduce, especially if the ones who live there aren't very agressive, but you probably will have boy rats going after them. If the current residents are tame enough to catch, it might be easiest to catch them and stick them with the new rats in a tub or something together, that way they're in captivity when they're introduced and are more likely to stick around when they're set loose.

Again, once they're out there there is a good chance they will meet wild males and do what rats do best. If that's the case you'll probably never have to buy more! They don't usually live very long in the wild, but there's a good chance you'll have a pretty steady stream.

[farla.livejournal.com]

See our neighbors hate us enough already without us attracting wild rats.