Dazzle Me is a closed rattery, meaning that no one is allowed to enter the rattery for any reason. We go to great lengths to keep our rats healthy, inside and out, and we are going to what may seem like extreme measures to keep them healthy. We've gone through an SDA infection in June 2003 and have experienced a KRV scare in October of 2003 and would like to never experience either again. I realize how important it is for people to view how our rats, and your future babies, are kept, so we are working on getting up pictures of our current rat room set up.



 We've been through aquariums, galvanized, SuperPet, home-made PVC and now powder-coated Martin's Cages. We will be sticking with the Martin's Cages. They are easy to clean, roomy, easy to lift and look much nicer than all the other's I've experienced. We do house our very elderly rats, single males and hard-to-handle rats (rescues) in Superpet cages. The elderly rats don't have to struggle up and down cage levels, and the biters don't get to tear my fingers off when I feed them ;). Our favorite Martin's Cages are the R-670s, R-690s and R-695s. We also have a CC-3018 collapsible ferret cage with special 1" x 1/2" bar spacing that is our Maternity Cage.
 
  Moms with babies are kept in the Maternity cage in the main living area of the house for ultimate socialization of the babies. They are used to all kinds of sights and sounds, including other animals, people, TV, peaceful radio and good old fashion home cooking smells! Everybody that walks by the cage cannot help but pick up a baby and play with them.


We feed our rats a staple diet of Harlan Teklad Lab Blocks in formulas #8604 for adult females and growing rats, and #2018 for adult males. In addition to their lab blocks they are provided with a variation of the Suebee's grain mix which includes puffed rice, puffed wheat, Cheerios, tri-color rotini and sunflower seeds. And of course our rats also enjoy fruits, vegetables, various other human foods (yogurt, cooked pasta, etc) and jarred baby foods (banana, sweet potato, etc) on a regular basis.



 For bedding/litter we typically use Harlan's Pelleted Paper which is very similar to Yesterday's News. Recently we have begun to use Aspen bedding which has worked very well. It's lighter, provides softer landings for rats who decide to fly off levels of their cage, and it doesn't break down like the pellets tend to do. Both types of litters have their good qualities.


 Our rats enjoy a variety of toys and playthings. We offer colorful ferret litterboxes for added levels in their cage, bird links for ultimate climbing fun, cat ball toys to bat around, paper shreds for extreme nest building, igloos for peaceful sleep times, large fleece hammocks to pile into, PVC tubes to race back and forth through, jingle rat toys to gnaw on and knock down from one level to another, and cardboard boxes to chew, destroy, hide behind, attack from behind (while hiding), etc. We alternate the toys regularly between the cages.

Newsflash!