My friend just gave me a domestic rat. A female how do I care for it?

It's a white female a bit bigger than my hand. I have no idea how to care for it but I couldn't let it get put outside. She had a large playing cage with saw dust in the bottom and little food dishes and water. So How Do i care for it also, she has a little scab she is pickign at on her back with a little wound not to big at all just clean it maybe and neosporin?

She is in my house

Sawdust, pine and cedar shavings = BAD. They'll make her sick: every rat outside of a lab has a bacterium called mycoplasma ( http://ratguide.com/health/bacteria/myco... ). Not every rat gets sick from it, but it's activated by dust (as in sawdust and/or house dust), phenols (the natural chemicals in pine and cedar that make them smell so nice), drafts, stress, strong smells like perfume and cologne, and tobacco smoke.

Active myco NEEDS antibiotics and CANNOT be treated with anything over the counter. The antibiotics can only be prescribed by a rat-savvy exotics vet - your average cat-and-dog vet won't have any idea of the correct dosages. Active myco can rack up considerable vet bills - in my case, it was upwards of 400 鈧?for two rats over the course of two years.

Rats have just as much right to go to the vet as people have to go to the doctor - can't afford the vet? Can't afford the pet. Rats are NOT low-maintenance pets, regardless of what pet shops and some people would have you believe.

Switch her to aspen shavings, paper-based bedding like Yesterday's News or polar fleece strips NOW.

You need to feed her proper rat food (the most complete, if boring, diet is lab blocks - Harlan Teklad and Mazuri are the ones recommended by experts, but if those aren't available in your area, you can feed her Altromin), NOT the cheap rubbish sold in pet and grocery shops as "rodent food", which is probably what she's eating right now. That's nothing but junk food - next to no nutritional value, but with loads of fat. She'll also need fresh food - fruit, veggies and meat: that old wives' tale about rats and meat is just that - a myth. I fed my girls meat products every week since I got them and never had any problems. Just watch out for the foods listed here: http://www.petratscanada.com/forbidden_f...

Remember to change her water daily.

You also NEED to get her a ratty friend. Rats are EXTREMELY social and tend to become clingy, neurotic, depressed, in some cases even aggressive when they're kept singly. There are VERY few exceptions that can't be housed with other rats, but don't just assume that your rat is one of them.
http://www.nfrs.org/company.html
http://www.ratfanclub.org/single.html
http://www.rmca.org/Resources/apair.txt
http://www.curiosityrats.com/infolone.ht...
http://fancy-rats.co.uk/information/guid...

You'll need to quarantine http://ratguide.com/health/basics/quaran... the new rat (make sure it's the same gender as your current one - breeding is NOT for beginners!) in a separate airspace, like a rodentless friend or relative's house, for a month, to make sure he or she isn't carrying something nasty that would kill them both.

After quarantine, you need to introduce http://ratguide.com/care/behavior/introd... them slowly - if you just plop them in the same cage the resident rat will see the new one as competition and/or a threat, and will attack. The fight might result in serious injury, perhaps even death.

Make sure your cage is big enough for two or more rats - run its dimensions through the rat cage calculator ( http://www.rattycorner.com/odds/calc.sht... ) - before you get a new rat. The absolute MINIMUM cage space for one rat is two cubic feet - the more space they have, the happier they are.

You'll need to clean the cage at least once a week - if you leave it too long, it will STINK. Rat urine turns to ammonia, which irritates their lungs and triggers myco, resulting in considerable vet bills.

Rats are smart and will need mental stimulation - toys, things to chew on, basically anything that requires them to use their brains. A bored rat becomes destructive - if the cage base is plastic or wooden, they'll chew their way out from sheer boredom.

put it in ur house

i found this site very helpful...

http://ratguide.com/care/

good luck with your new pet !

hope i helped,
-morganluverX10

just provide food and water if wound looks infected bath it in cold tea in has anti septic propertys she will need toys or she will get bored rats are verry intelegent and playful loo rools are exerlent and free ps keep her away from males unless u want huns of baby rats lol

Why did yur friend give you that rat? Maybe you got it sick. Take it to the vet for a check-up or buy this special drops for rat cutts in stores.
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Hope it isn't sick!

Feed it

Rats make excellent pets! The first thing to do is make sure she is being housed adequately. Tanks are not good for rats because there is not enough airflow. A great site to get cages from is www.martinscages.com. You also want to make sure you are not using pine or cedar bedding because these contain phenols (oils) that can cause respiratory illness in small animals.

A fantastic site full of info is www.ratsahoy.com

Many rat owners make their own food (google Suebee's mix) because seed mixes are just not nutritionally sound. You can also feed her a good high quality lab block like Mazuri.

After you have had her for a couple of weeks, you should consider getting her a same-sex friend. Rats are very social and when introduced properly, will be the best of friends.

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