I always rescue, foster, and then adopt out rats that I pick up from Craigslist.
Tonight I got a 3-5 month old female dumbo rat from someone who was not feeding her or caring for her in the least bit. Therefore, she is extremely aggressive at the cage bars, charging, grunting, and chewing vigorously at the bars. She was very hungry and thirsty when she first arrived so I fed/watered her. I have not held her without gloves yet. She is quite squirmy, too.
It is my goal to adopt out every rat I get. Out of the many others I have taken in, I have never had one behave like this.
What should I do for her/with her? The other owner said she dislikes other rats (I have four others) so I do not want to risk having her tear apart one of my old sweeties.
Thank you for any advice.
nomayonnaiseinireland2009-12-13T19:47:43Z
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Congratulations on the newest member of your family, your rat is relatively young so you have a good chance of taming her well. The cause you are doing is noble and I wish you well in it.
First of all, keep holding her, no matter how much she squirms and bites, do it even if you have to wear gloves. Get her used to you, and help her to trust you. Feed her out of your hand special treats, give her bits of cereal or fresh fruits or veggies. If she won't take it from you, let her smell it in your hand, then put it in her food dish. Depending on how panicky she is, hold her at least twice a day for short periods, 5-15 minutes. Talk calmly to her, rats of course can't understand our language but they can to a certain extent read our tone and our intentions. Talk sweetly, tell her to calm down, compliment her on how well she is doing, on how pretty she is, sing her a song, you will be surprised at how effective this can be.
Depending on the rat and how badly she has been abused/neglected taming her could take as little as a week, or as long as a few months, I would anticipate it taking about 2-3 weeks though. Hamsters are much harder to tame than rats and I have socialized many of them in around 2 weeks, even when they came to me being really wild. Rats don't usually take me that long, but none of mine were as badly neglected as yours seems.
If she is really panicky start out slow, put your gloved hand in her cage and pet her in there. Move slowly, if you move quickly you will jump her and the adrenaline rush will make her even more panicky. Let her get used to you both in and out of her cage during the socialization process.Once you get her out and have her relatively calm, take one glove off and pet her with your bare hand keeping sure to watch for being bitten. You put your scent on her this way and this is part of how she will get to know you, this also starts building trust, two-way trust that you are beginning to trust her and she will trust you. Remember that animals read and respond to your own tension levels, I had a friend who complained of her rat biting her, she brought her rat over and I handled her for 20 minutes, she only nipped me a little once, and it was not hard. Because my friend was nervous about being bitten the rat became nervous and bit her, when I held the rat I was not nervous and so the rat was calm. The fact that you love your rat, and care for her already will go a long way towards taming her.
When you clean out her cage give her some bedding that has your scent on it, take a couple of paper towels and wipe your forehead and face with them, stick them in your shirt for a couple of hours, and tear them into strips. Place it in her cage as bedding. This may be dine with scraps of cloth as well but be careful because some cloth shreds and leaves dangling strings that can hurt or strangulate your pet.
Handle her often, while she is still nervous you don't want to stress her out too much by handling her too much. As she gets used to you her anxiety will wane, then you will hold her more often getting her more used to you.
Eventually, and only when she is very well tamed, you may want to introduce her to your other rats. Do NOT put them in each others cages, as each rats cage is also its territory and they will get defensive, even if several rats live there. Introduce them in neutral territory. I have two places in my house I use for this, one is my bed, the other is a 'playpen' a large box with its top cut off and its sides trimmed down to short walls. The playpen has some old clothes of mine as padding, and a few toys in there. Introduce the new rat to the others holding the one and looking for signs of aggression in any of them. Pet all of them in turn transferring your scent to all of them and their scents to each other, if they seem fine after a few minutes, you may release her and let them interact. If not, then either take your time letting them get to know each other or separate them and keep them apart, its not worth letting them hurt each other. Separate them at the first signs of fighting, if the fighting is mild, more wrestling, it may be play fighting which is normal, but with newly introduced rats take no chances.
I have socialized (tamed) rats, feral cats, guinea pigs, hamsters (dwarf and Syrian), mice, rabbits, snakes, ferrets, gerbils, at least one degu, and probably more animals I can't think of right now. With the exception of the feral cats (no cage) they are pretty much all the same, they take love, care and attention.
Usually when a rat is unsocialized (scared of people) they can eventually be tamed with enough time and effort. When a rat is vicious, however, they are not scared of people at all and this behaviour can be very hard, if not impossible, to remedy. The treatment is the same: keep trying to handle her and hope that she gets better. Try not to handle her inside her cage, as many aggressive rats become more aggressive when you enter their domain. Let her come out of the cage by herself before trying to handle her. You may want to set something up where you could leave the door to her cage open and she could come out onto a safe tabletop when you are in the room, giving her the change to explore and find bits of food or treats you've left up there. If you leave her cage open and set it on the couch while you're watching TV or something she can choose to come up to you if she wants. Maybe with enough time, effort, and love, she will see that you are not a threat.
Unfortunately, in my experience these rats almost never change their ways. I usually just end up keeping them until they die of old age. I would try to see if she would get along with your other rats, but wait until she's settled in for a week or two at the absolute least before you even try. Let them meet on neutral territory first, and if she shows any signs of aggression don't try it any more. If she's fine, you can try putting them in the cage together, but if they fight aggressively or any blood is drawn then she most likely will not be able to get along with other rats either.
I really hope you can manage to fix her, but don't feel bad if you don't succeed. It's sad, but it's unfortunately the price some rats have to pay for the cruelty of humans. Good luck!