Just because they’re small, don’t go thinking that you can give a rat any less care, commitment and love than you’d give to a bigger pet. In this guide, we show you by far the best way to give your pets the time of their little lives – which usually last around two years.

The more you get to know your rats (Latin name Rattus norvegicus), and get to know about them, the better. There’s more fun to be had, and more reward, every single day.

Rats make excellent pets, especially for older children and adults. They’re clean, friendly, inquisitive and highly intelligent. They love a bit of problem-solving – and you can even teach them tricks. They bond well with people and rarely bite.

Although rats are sleepy-heads all day long, they’re usually up in the late afternoon and evening. Bright-eyed, long-tailed and ready for action – absolutely ideal for when you get in.

Background
Wild rats can be found all over Europe, although they originated in Asia. The population spread across the world when the rats were sneaky stowaways on merchant ships. The domestic or fancy rat is descended from the Brown Rat (also known as the Norwegian Rat) and is thought to have originated from Asia moving into Europe in 1553 and then onto the US in 1775.

Domesticated rats are very clean, intelligent animals. They are very different to their wild cousins.

There are many different colour variations among rats, and three types of coat – smooth-haired, rex and hairless.
To take the best care of your rats, you’ll need all these things:

Large multi-level cage
Wood shavings
Soft bedding
Tubes and other toys
Suparat complete food
Ceramic food bowl
Water bottle
Gnaw blocks
Pet Safe disinfectant

Chinchillas can’t get enough nutrition from fibre as it first passes through the gut. So they pass it through the gut again. Indigestible fibre is moved through their digestive system and excreted as separate, round, hard droppings. This acts to keep the digestive system moving and stimulate appetite.

Digestible fibre is moved up into an organ called the caecum – this is like a giant appendix. Good bacteria in the caecum ferment the fibre (making it easy to digest) which then emerges in the form of clumps of sticky droppings – called caecotrophs. Chinchillas then re-eat the caecotrophs and their systems extract essential nutrition as the digestible fibre passes through for the second time.

Failing to provide adequate portions of the right kind of fibre can rapidly lead to illness or death. At Burgess Excel, we call the correct ratio of these two types of fibre ‘Beneficial Fibre’.

That’s why muesli-style foods are such a problem. Chinchillas can become fussy eaters, and will eat sweet foods as an easy way to get a glucose fix. As a result, they can pick out unhealthy elements of muesli-style foods and leave the rest. This is called selective feeding and will inevitably lead to an imbalanced diet, lacking in calcium, phosphorus and vitamin D. Above all, this behaviour can lead to a lack of fibre with potentially fatal consequences. When taken with the fact that muesli-style foods are commonly low in fibre to begin with, the problem is compounded.

And finally, the unhealthy ingredients in muesli-style foods are high in sugar and starch. These are difficult for chinchillas to digest and can lead to health problems and obesity.

These problems can be avoided by sticking to The Excel Feeding Plan and giving your chinchillas Excel food. Both were developed by Burgess with one of the world’s leading small-animal vets to provide a perfect daily balance of fibre and nutrition. Click here to view products in the Excel Feeding Plan for Chinchillas

STEP 1 – Excel Herbage and Forage
These premium quality hay and grass foods should form most of your pets’ diet. They are especially good for dental health as they contain high levels of Beneficial Fibre that help to wear down teeth. The teeth of chinchillas are constantly growing and overgrown teeth can be the cause of potentially fatal problems.

STEP 2 – Excel Tasty Nuggets
These contain 100% natural, wholesome ingredients, are naturally high in Beneficial Fibre for digestive health and have added vitamins, minerals and prebiotics. Because they’re not a muesli-style mix, they prevent selective feeding.

STEP 3 – Excel Nature Snacks
These healthy, nutritious natural snacks are ideal for chinchillas as they promote emotional health – preventing boredom and encouraging bonding and interaction between you and your pet. They can be fed daily because they’re packed with goodness, and all made with pure, natural ingredients. Some are specially designed to be fed by hand which helps pets to get comfortable with human attention.

STEP 4
Chinchillas can be fed fresh greens to give additional fresh nutrients and to provide some variety. But you need to be careful about what you feed them, and how much – please see below for more information

STEP 5
A plentiful supply of fresh, clean water must always be available.

Your chinchillas will love to eat fresh fruit and vegetables – but too much of a good thing is actually very bad for them. Around a teaspoon every day or every other day is perfect for an adult chinchilla. Some foods should be avoided altogether and you should be careful never to overfeed – because that can cause bloat, which can kill.

GOOD – apple, blueberry, carrot, celery, grape, orange, potato, pumpkin, squash, sweet potato. The snack that chinchillas love most of all however is raisins.

BAD – asparagus, peas, cabbage, corn, lettuce, broccoli, rhubarb & rhubarb leaves, spinach.

Start to form a bond by hand-feeding Excel Nature Snacks, always being careful to make very gentle movements in the cage. Move on gradually to stroking and, finally, to picking your chinchillas up.

Pick up your pets by putting one hand firmly under the bottom and the other over the back and pulling into your chest with the head facing you – that way your chinchillas will feel secure. Their ribs are very, very fragile, so be very, very gentle.

If you handle your pets regularly, they will become more confident and relaxed.

Chinchillas very rarely bite, but they’re very sensitive to rough handling and show their distress in other ways. Keep an eye out for ‘fur slip’, when patches of fur are shed, which is a sure sign of fear or distress.

Never pick your chinchillas up by the tail – it will cause pain and distress and may lead to skin coming away, known as fur slip.

The cage makes a perfect playground. As we said in the housing section there should be shelves and branches, but rails and ramps make exciting new routes to explore too.

A scattering of wooden chewing blocks increases the fun, as does hiding healthy Excel Nature Snacks for your chinchillas to sniff out.

The cage is a great place for games, but a little time exploring the wider world of your room is good too. Rule 1: make the room escape-proof – your chinchillas could be out through a tiny gap quick as a shot. Rule 2: make the room chew-proof – it’s especially important to safeguard wires that your pets could easily gnaw through.

Worried about an escape bid or damage? Build a special exercise run or playpen instead – but putting them in a run outside is not recommended as if they do escape you will be highly unlikely to get them back.

The best cages are made from wire mesh (which should have a mesh no larger than 15mm x 15mm) which extends across the floor too. They love to chew and would gnaw their way through a wooden floor in no time.

The wire cage bottom also allows urine and droppings to fall through into a tray where it can be absorbed by newspaper or dust-free wood chippings. This not only makes cleaning up easier, it keeps your chinchillas away from damp litter too – they’re very prone to catching colds in damp conditions.
The handy tray also stops droppings getting caught up in your pets’ thick coats.
Replace soiled litter every day and clean the entire cage with a safe disinfectant (you can buy special cleaning agents from specialist pet shops) once a week.

To give your chinchillas’ feet a rest from standing on the wire (which can lead to a chronic condition called bumblefoot), fit some solid shelves and branches to sit on – ideally these should be apple or pear as some branches have sap that can be poisonous. Make them out of soft wood – it keeps your pets entertained to have something to chew on.

Within the cage, you should create a small bedroom area where your pets can snuggle up and feel secure. You can buy a small chinchilla nest box from specialist pet shops, and these don’t need bedding. But your pet will eventually chew through it, so make sure there are no nails or staples in its construction.

Showing behaviour that’s unique amongst rodents, your chinchillas will love a bath – not a water bath, but a good sand bath to keep the coat in tip-top condition. Have a special container and fill it with approved chinchilla sand only, which stops the skin being damaged. Put the bath in the cage several times a week, but only for ten minutes at a time, in case it gets used as a toilet.

A constant temperature is ideal, so you should put the cage out of direct sunlight and away from draughts and radiators. Your chinchillas will bear cold quite well, but may be prone to over-heating. At temperatures greater than 25?C, chinchillas cool themselves down by sending blood to their large ears – so red ears can be a sign of over-heating.

Chinchillas like the company of other chinchillas. Choose a pair or a group, but try to make them all the same sex, and it’s best to get all your pets at the same time.

Rabbits can’t get enough nutrition from fibre as it first passes through the gut. So they pass it through the gut again. Indigestible fibre is moved through their digestive system and excreted as separate, round, hard droppings. This acts to keep the digestive system moving and stimulate appetite.

Digestible fibre is moved up into an organ called the caecum – this is like a giant appendix. Good bacteria in the caecum ferment the fibre (making it easy to digest) which then emerges in the form of clumps of sticky droppings – called caecotrophs. Rabbits then re-eat the caecotrophs and their systems extract essential nutrition as the digestible fibre passes through for the second time.

Failing to provide adequate portions of the right kind of fibre can rapidly lead to illness or death. At Burgess Excel, we call the correct ratio of these two types of fibre ‘Beneficial Fibre’.

That’s why muesli-style foods are such a problem. Rabbits can become fussy eaters, and will eat sweet foods as an easy way to get a glucose fix. As a result, they can pick out unhealthy elements of muesli-style foods and leave the rest. This is called selective feeding and will inevitably lead to an imbalanced diet, lacking in calcium, phosphorus and vitamin D. Above all, this behaviour can lead to a lack of fibre with potentially fatal consequences. When taken with the fact that muesli-style foods are commonly low in fibre to begin with, the problem is compounded.

And finally, the unhealthy ingredients in muesli-style foods are high in sugar and starch. These are difficult for rabbits to digest and can lead to health problems and obesity. Rabbits eat caecotrophs directly from their bottoms –obese rabbits often cannot reach the caecotrophs which can lead to malnutrition and death.

The problem can be avoided by sticking to The Excel Feeding Plan and giving your rabbits Excel food. Both were developed by Burgess with one of the world’s leading small-animal vets to provide a perfect daily balance of fibre and nutrition.
Click here to view products in the Excel Feeding Plan for Rabbits

STEP 1 – Excel Herbage and Forage
These premium quality hay and grass foods should form most of your pets’ diet. They are especially good for dental health as they contain high levels of Beneficial Fibre that help to wear down teeth. The teeth of rabbits are constantly growing and overgrown teeth can be the cause of potentially fatal problems.

STEP 2 – Excel Tasty Nuggets
These contain 100% natural, wholesome ingredients, are naturally high in Beneficial Fibre for digestive health and have added vitamins, minerals and prebiotics. Because they’re not a muesli-style mix, they prevent selective feeding.

STEP 3 – Excel Nature Snacks
These healthy, nutritious natural snacks are ideal for rabbits as they promote emotional health – preventing boredom and encouraging bonding and interaction between you and your pet. They can be fed daily because they’re packed with goodness, and are all made with pure, natural ingredients. Some are specially designed to be fed by hand which helps pets to get comfortable with human attention.

STEP 4
Rabbits can be fed fresh greens to give additional fresh nutrients and to provide some variety. But you need to be careful about what you feed them, and how much – please see below for more information

STEP 5
A plentiful supply of fresh, clean water must always be available.

You can feed fresh fruit and vegetables too, but keep quantities small – about a teacup a day of fresh greens is enough for adult rabbits. Their digestive systems are not able to digest large quantities of these rich foods, the result being diarrhoea.

Not all fruit, vegetables and greenery are good for rabbits – here’s a brief guide.

GOOD – apple (pip-less), asparagus, banana, basil, broccoli, Brussel sprouts, cabbage, carrots – especially carrot tops, cauliflower leaves and stalks, celery, chicory, cucumber, dill, fennel, grapes, green pepper, kale, mint, orange (peeled), oregano, parsley, red leaf lettuce, red cabbage, romaine lettuce, Savoy cabbage, spinach, tomato, turnip, watercress.

BAD – apple pips, potato and potato tops, rhubarb (leaves and stalks), tomato leaves, locust pods and beans, avacados.

Ideally, neutering should take place before the age of six months. Females (does) can be neutered from 14 weeks, males (bucks) as soon as the testicles have descended. Bucks can remain fertile for four weeks after the procedure, so they should be kept separate from un-neutered does during that time.

It takes two hands to pick your rabbits up properly, one taking the majority of the weight under the bottom. Rabbits are happy to be held, but can get jumpy if they don’t feel secure, so keep them close to your body and, especially for the first few times, not too far off the floor, in case they try to jump. It’s good to have a non-slip surface to handle them on, a towel or carpet for example.

Never pick your rabbits up by the ears or the scruff of the neck – it is extremely stressful.