I have two fussy eaters.

They ate it the first day (well, at least one of them did, I'm guessing Miles since I only saw him eat it). Now, neither of them will eat it. It sits, in the bowl with the remnants of the stuff I fed them before (sunflower seed shells mostly). But they don't appear to be eating it.

They won't starve themselves right? They will eventually choose to eat it?

I'm almost willing to include only some of it with a mixture like Subees (sp?) but I don't know if that will do anything useful, since they can pick out what they want and leave the rest.

Hi everyone!

( Introduction (Edited) )

Hey everyone. I've had my female rat (her name is Gwen) for a little over a year now. I was talking to a cousin of mine that had rats quite a few years ago and she said that she trained her rat to pick up a tiny teacup and drink from it. This got me to thinking... what other things can you train a rat to do? Also, are there any good techniques that actually work? She already knows how to run along my arm and sit on my shoulder, but she's been doing that since the day that I got her. That didn't call for any sort of training.

( Obligatory Rat Photo )

Thanks for all the help!! =D

Thought this was interesting and just heavy with nifty. Sorry if it's been posted before:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08164/889198-55.stm?cmpid=neighborhoods.xml

So uh...I spent today with some bolts, a Phillips head screwdriver, and my wits.

And I came up with ( this )

Yeah, it's lacking in toys and some of the beautiful color coordination I've seen in some of the cages around here, but give it time, and I'm sure I can put more in. That's ALL of their toys and things, minus a few hammocks getting washed. The absolute accessibility and amount of area is positively intoxicating. I swear, I was downright giddy when I was placing their toys. Any suggestions for bedding? I've been using towels and fleece since I've had them, but the fleece comes apart when I wash it and starts threading. Incidentally, it was kind of a pain in the ass to put this guy together by myself, but it was also really, really satisfying in a weird way. I scrubbed down the old cage with hot water and white vingear and it's outside now. I'm going to bake it in the sun for a few days and then see if I can't donate it to a shelter around here, since it's kind of too big to keep around as a secondary cage.

Spoiled little monsters. :P

Both of my boys are about 7.5 months old, and I've had them since they were 5 weeks old. I've had them out close to every day I've had them, either on my bed, around on my shoulders, in the bathtub or in my lap in a big chair. To this day, they are both fairly skittish and for the most part aren't too keen on having my hands near them. They will occasionally indulge in a scratching (one more so than the other), but for the most part they're more content to hang out with each other. Whenever I let them out, I always provide them somewhere to hide in case they want to get away from me (a paper bag, a smoothie cup or two, this week its a shoebox with some holes cut in the sides and top). Today I had them out for an hour- they spent the first 10 minutes exploring the bed and climbing on me a bit, and the next 50 minutes in the shoebox occasionally poking their heads out and darting back in whenever I moved too quickly.

When I first got them I lived in a different place and they had more roaming around the bed time, and when I would get them from the cage all I would need to do was open the door and they would climb out onto my shoulders. At my new place they don't get as much bed time, and they usually spend their out of the cage time in a chair with me (I live in a studio now and the bed leaves them open to cats, but I can protect them in the chair. Every now and then I shut the cats in the kitchen and give them bed time but I don't like to shut the cats out of the air conditioned room for too long.) Their cage is on the same shelf I used to have it on, but I've added to it vertically so now the top of it is well over my head. They still rush to the door when I approach it and they're awake and at night they stare at me to open the doors up, but they'd rather climb on the outside of the cage than onto my arm or shoulder.

So what can I do to get them to be more social, or what have I done to possibly make them more anxious? I've thought of everything from cage height to environmental factors to hormones and I don't really know. If I having them out more often or for longer periods of time would help them I'd gladly do it, but I don't want to annoy them if they're happier hanging out in the cage.