Taming Your Rats
Before you start training your rats, you'll want to tame them. A tame rat will be much easier to train as they no longer have any reason to fear you. Because of this, their ability and willingness to learn to communicate with you will be heightened, and they'll be able to focus on learning the tricks themselves.
There are many different ways to successfully tame your rats...
A semi-empty cage can speed up the taming process
...but this is how I do it. First, I give all new rats a pretty bare and uninteresting cage. This might sound cruel, but in actually it gives the new rats a reason to interact with me. After all, especially if you have more timid rats then they really have no reason to interact with you besides curiosity and food. They already have toys, companionship provided by other rats, food, and water, so the best way to get them interested in you and the outside world is to make their cage less entertaining. Don't worry, as soon as your rats adjust you can ramp the cage decorations up to 11 and your rats will still beg to see you whenever you visit the cage :)
Practicing holding and feeding my new baby rats
The next thing I do is I take the rats out (from day 1!) into a small playpen with only me. This establishes me as a safe spot and by practicing picking up and giving high value liquid treats (think meat baby food and whip cream) while handling the rats, they quickly learn to tolerate it (and later to enjoy it!)
Photo taken on skittish Cream's 3rd day home!
I continue working with my new rats in this playpen until they tolerate handling and being picked up very well. At that point, I switch gears and start to use food to lure them out of the cage as opposed to grabbing them. This helps to drive home those positive associations with my hands, and it works much quicker than simply trust training as in this case the rats have already learned to not be afraid of walking onto my hands.
My usual playpen
Finally, once I can easily get my rats out of the cage with a lure then I transition to my large playpen. It usually takes them a few days to get accustomed to this larger area with more toys and hides, but once they get used to it they'll begin to wake up right before the daily free-range time and beg to come out!
Taming tips:
- Make sure to give your rats a small bit of liquid treats whenever you walk by the cage. If at first they won't accept any, then just leave a small sample in the cage to teach them just how yummy your treats are! And if your afraid of being bit, the best thing to do is first offer the liquids off a metal spoon. Once your rats learn to lick liquid treats from a spoon (and sense rats hate biting metal this will only take a try or two!), they will easily transition this behavior towards licking treats off your hand as well.
- Handle your rats on a daily basis. While tame rats rarely regress to being skittish, rats in the process of being tamed need daily handling and interaction in order to become accustomed to the feeling of being held.
- Give your rats liquid treats when you hold them. By giving liquid treats each time you pick up your rats, they'll begin to develop a very positive association with being picked up and handled. Once your rats grow to love handling, treats will no longer be necessary and being held will become a reward in itself!
- Interact with your rats on a daily basis. In the event that you can't or just don't feel comfortable handling your new rats from the start, making sure to spend time talking to them and feeding yummy meat baby food (even off something like a metal spoon!) is a great way to start to build their trust in your presence near and inside the cage.
- Finally, make sure only one or two people do the initial taming. This is especially important with shy rats, as while it may be tempting to smother the rats with love right from the start, this only serves to scare a terrified rat even more. By limiting the people who interact with them and making all of those experiences positive (aka linked with food!), your rats will tame down much faster than if you let everyone handle them at once. Don't worry though, as once your rats accept and bond with you its much easier to convince them to enjoy being with other people as well (hint: once your rats are tame have other people hand them treats and hold them. They'll begin to accept other people pretty quickly, and the more people they accept the easier introducing new people will be!)
If you'd like to see how I personally tame my rats, you can watch the videos below:
Taming series with skittish babies: |
How To Socialize Skittish Rats: |
Tips on Bonding with Your Rats: |
How I Tame My Rats: |
Disclosure: Esther (and her site rattrix.weebly.com) is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com
