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Using kitty litter

C

chris morrison

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Hello, I recently posted some questions about starting a rat colony in the winter. First of all, thank you to everyone that replied. I have a 40 gallon terrarium and a 30(?) gallon tank that I am currently using for my male and female rats until I can build a rat rack next summer. There are about 10 male rats at the moment in my 40 and 8 females in my 30. I am using Cell-sorb plus bedding in both tanks and have water bottles attached to the sides and nothing else. I will try and post a picture next time I am at my computer since I am using my phone's internet and it will not allow me to post pictures from it. It seems like my tanks start to smell the next day after I change them and I can not even make it a week without having to clean them out. When I change the tanks I am cleaning them out with a disinfectant, then scrubbing them out with soap and water, and then adding the bedding when they are dry and prevent-a-miting them. The bags of cell-sorb cost me over $20 and it takes about the entire bag to fill my tanks, so having to buy a new bag every 3 days is starting to take its toll. Surely this can't be right? Am I using the right material? Can I use kitty litter in their tanks instead of cell-sorb or will that not work? Could I maybe fill one side of the tank with kitty litter and the other side with bedding? Or could I mix the two? Any help would be awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.
 
Rats stink, it's something we have to deal with. I use pine, and clean once a week or when I start to smell them, whichever comes first.

There are lots of things folks have used for rat bedding. Pine horse bedding pellets, pine, aspen, newspaper, carefresh, etc etc etc. Just find one you like, that fits your budget.

Lucille is right. The clumping or any type of clay cat litters won't work. I learned that with the ferret rescue. Clumping litter + nasal membranes = concrete.
 
I've never used it for rats, and when I have used it it's been litterboxes only and not substrate. :shrug01:

Never know unless you try it I guess. Just seems like it's so much more needlessly expensive than some of the traditional alternatives.
 
So is this equine fresh pellet product okay to use as substrate? I've read about people using that for theor rat cages. Ha ha, I'm just trying to figure out what to use. I think what the pet store suggested for me was just a way to keep me coming in all the time spending money. The same goes for the food they suggested, Sun-thing special 5 pound bags of food blocks.
 
Chris, go to a feed store instead of a pet store if you need very large amounts of substrate at cheap prices. I get shavings for $5 for a large bale here from the local feed store, a little more for aspen. Why not look up a local feed store and go look around? You might find that rodent food in 50 or 100 lbs sacks is a good alternative, too.
 
Any clay kitty litter is not suitable. It's too dusty, among a number of other problems. Some of the fancier stuff might work, but all of those are pelleted and may be mistaken for food : /

Lucielle has the right idea. Whatever it is doesn't have to be fancy, just absorbent, non-toxic, soft on their feet, and free of fine particulates.
 
I made a rack out of tanks years ago and I know exactly what you are talking about. I ended up turning it into a cabinet with doors and it sealed the stank in but it still smelled. I ended up ditching the tanks for tubs and it greatly decreased the smell because the ease of racks caused me to clean them more. Tanks are a pain and kitty litter would be hell. I also made the tub-rack into a cabinet, added an inline fan and ran a duct out of the house. I keep roughly 100 rats in my house and you can't tell.

Cut back on the males. Males stink more than females. I'd go with two males for those eight girls because they are overcrowded right now. I'd put one male and four girls in each tank.

I use aspen for my rats but have used pine too. Pine works the best for smell IMO but you have to make sure you get good stuff. Fine, dusty pine can cause issues and can even transfer over to your snakes if the babies get dust clogs in their nose. Shredded aspen keeps the babies from getting lost as easily but needs to be changed more frequently than pine.

Please take this next trick with caution as I am just giving it a chance for the first time today. If you google it, you can learn more. Supposedly, if you add a couple teaspoons of pure (real not imitation) vanilla extract to a gallon of their water, it should reduce the smell. I don't think it could hurt the rats, but I have a gravity water system and it may gum up the lines. I haven't found anything about this but someone mentioned it could.
 
chris morrison said:
So is this equine fresh pellet product okay to use as substrate? I've read about people using that for theor rat cages. Ha ha, I'm just trying to figure out what to use. I think what the pet store suggested for me was just a way to keep me coming in all the time spending money. The same goes for the food they suggested, Sun-thing special 5 pound bags of food blocks.
Click to expand...

I agree about the local feed and seed store. I use to get pine redicoulously cheap there and I still go there for rat food. It comes out to just under fifty cents a pound for the good stuff. I use the Mazuri 6F for rat food and its great for nursing and breeding females. Other brands I've used and seen are Kent and Harlan. If the local pet store is selling you seed mixes and corn, you definitely want to get them on a better diet if you want to breed.
 
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