# 100 pet rats from a hoarder - HELP!



## BasmatiRice (Feb 11, 2012)

Hey,

I'm from Portugal and we recently had hundreds of animals rescued from a "lady" who was hoarding/farming cats, dogs and rats mostly.

The cats and the dogs were rapidly taken in by several animal shelters but there wasn't a single shelter who accepted taking the rats in... 

This means that there are about 100 rats in two bird cages, all clustered in there... I'm sure there are dead and/or dying animals inside those cages and obviously preggo females who are eating all of their pinkies...
We (a small community of rat lovers) are trying to solve this crisis but we haven't gathered as many cages as we would've liked, so I'm going to adapt two plastic tubs with wire mesh so it can hold some animals.

My problem is that I don't know how many animals can I safely put in each tub: they are both 21''1/2 x 13''1/2 x 7''1/2 (L55cm x W35cm x H19cm)

I know it isn't the ideal for them, but its as good as I can do for now, so please help 

Any ideas on how to tackle the problem (or anything really) are greatly appreciated...


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## Andyurgay (Jun 10, 2013)

Wow, that's is quite a crisis. I can't help you on how many to keep in each tub, but I'd say reach out internationally online and see if you can get some financial support for additional cages and other necessities. I know there are tons of sites out there for this purpose. Maybe reach out to the ASPCA head quarters and see if they can offer any assistance. Also PETA. I fell out with them years ago but I've heard they still put out the word when someone needs help with huge rescues. Not sure how they handle it now but it might be an idea. Reach out to rat or small pet rescues around the globe. Some are willing to travel quite a way to help out or offer help in another way. I'll try to find the sites that you can raise funds with for additional cages. Hopefully someone will come along with more help. Thank you for doing this though, we need more people like you.


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## Andyurgay (Jun 10, 2013)

Giveforward.com/raisefunds.com

fundrazr.com


gogetfunding.com

some good sites to start with. Social media is great too. Maybe start a Facebook or twitter for them to spread the word. You would be shocked how quickly things spread through social media.


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## Pilot. (Feb 11, 2014)

Do you have them in your custody? Because I'm sure a little crowding with 3 or 4 in each tub is better than 100 rammed into two cages. They'll be fine momentarily until you get cages for them, I'm sure  if I lived anywhere near there I would happily take in a few males but sadly I am all the way in michigan


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## BasmatiRice (Feb 11, 2012)

Thank you for all the ideas  We will try to erm... de-parasite (how do you say it?) them with Panacur starting on Sunday and I'll do an inventory of all the animals, with photos of each one, as I guess it will be easier to get help if people can see the animals for themselves... According to several reptile forums and websites I think I can put up to 4 rats in them, but I'm afraid it can a bit of a stretch... I really want them to become adoptable :/

We did a facebook page, but it's in portuguese  here it is: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ratazanas-da-Casa-dos-horrores/216964568492852?fref=ts


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

Revolution being better than panacure.... Otherwise do the best you can with what you have on hand. Inexpensive large cages can also be made out of masonry mesh and wire.


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## JoshDeMott2010 (Aug 25, 2007)

You are going to need 10-20 100Gallon totes... that's 5 or 10 rats per tote... Make sure to put a shelf or hammocks in there to create a little more floor space for them... One 100gallon tote from walmart Homz brand costs $14.00 That would come out to around $300.00 Which isn't that bad considering how many lives would be saved. You would need around $20.00 in hardware cloth to make an air mesh hole in the lid of each tub which would suffice for the purpose. $320.00 for the cages and probably $75.00 a month in food. I would make your budget goal $500.00 and go from there. Take plenty of pictures showing the condition of these guys and see if anyone will be able to donate or help out. 

P.S. if you can't reach $500.00 just get 10 totes which will cost around $150.00 and buy the hardware cloth Then you can at least get them out of that cage for under $200.00 and get them fed/watered.


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## BasmatiRice (Feb 11, 2012)

They are not in my custody, they're with a friend that had some space available... The association that has their legal custody know nothing about rats, so we teamed up to help organize and take care of them. I'll talk to the woman in charge of the "troupes" about the international help and those specific organizations, thank you very much! 

We tried to do an inventory on Sunday and the three of us (me and two other) only managed to check and organize the 28 male rats. There are many more females than males so I don't know how we are going to check and organize them all...
They were all very small and thin, with square tails, the heaviest male rat has 208g  they were all very docile and appeared to enjoy being handled...

We did the best we could separating them with the cages we had, the pics show all the cages we had available which are all in use:



























Thanks for all the support guys, it's good to have someone to talk to...


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## nanashi7 (Jun 5, 2013)

They need a lower protein diet wit square tails, which is unfortunate with the thinness. 

The females, if they were kept separate from the males, will need bins separately for the most part for 22 days to check or pregnancy, they can be the size of a 10gal tank. If you don't have hardware cloth, drillin a surplus of holes will suffice as a temporary measure.
If you can get hardware cloth, old cabinets or bookshelves can easily be made into HUGE cages.

If you are close to the border and it isn't heavily regulated, reachin out to groups in Spain may help.
http://www.thecedarcentre.com/animal-rescue-registar.html A list of animals rescues I'd network to


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## BasmatiRice (Feb 11, 2012)

We separated the females from the males but we need more cages for the females, else they will eat their pinkies once they are born, as it has happened before...

I have some hardware cloth left, I'll see if I can find a bookshelf wide enough for that (most are about 25 cm wide, a bit more would be better, no?)

I bought them a 20Kg bag of lab blocks, but they're not eating them, so we did a mix made from lab blocks, corn flakes, tricolor fusilli pasta, a bag of oxbow, bird seeds mix, hamster mix (to try and fatten them up) and dwarf rabbit mix... It'll be good for about 10 to 12 days, after that we will have to mix dog food with the lab blocks, the pasta and the corn flakes... I'll be buying more bird seeds when the time comes.
Here's a pic of the food we made (for some reason the orange fusilli looks really red, but I guess its from the photo machine or something):


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## nanashi7 (Jun 5, 2013)

You want at least 30cm wide, preferably.

http://www.shunamiterats.co.uk/shunamite.shtml I wasn't sure if you new this mix, it is supposedly inexpensive.


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## BasmatiRice (Feb 11, 2012)

Part of our problem is that we are in Portugal, and we have very little brands that sell rat food, and none of those brands of either rabbit or dog food  I tried the best with what we had at hand... I'll try to complete it with some of the ingredients of that mix, I'm also going to look at a cooked diet Isamurat posted in another thread to give to the preggo females once we separate them conveniently, lets see what we can do...

On a side note, I fell on the street and hurt my right knee pretty bad, so I can't drive now. Hooray for bad timing :/


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## Gannyaan (Dec 7, 2012)

BasmatiRice said:


> Part of our problem is that we are in Portugal, and we have very little brands that sell rat food, and none of those brands of either rabbit or dog food  I tried the best with what we had at hand... I'll try to complete it with some of the ingredients of that mix, I'm also going to look at a cooked diet Isamurat posted in another thread to give to the preggo females once we separate them conveniently, lets see what we can do...
> 
> On a side note, I fell on the street and hurt my right knee pretty bad, so I can't drive now. Hooray for bad timing :/


You are doing your best!! Honestly, for now I would focus money and efforts into gettin them into some bins and improving their quality of life and reaching out to agencies , and leave it for now. They'll be okay for a while Eating dog food and dried pasta. Focus your time and energy on getting these little guys a good quality of life !! 100 rats will be very hard to re-home ...


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## JoshDeMott2010 (Aug 25, 2007)

It's awesome that you are going to such great lengths to save the little guys thanks and keep fighting


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## Hey-Fay (Jul 8, 2013)

I truly wish I could help but I live in Michigan and the only cash I have is the payment from one of my customers for her order. I hate that I cant donate or take a few girls off your hands. I hope they all get loving forever homes and i hope that you get all the help you need and more.


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## BasmatiRice (Feb 11, 2012)

Thank you all for the support, we've been working hard to make all animals as comfortable as possible! 
After making a listing of all the animals, we realized the first count was waay off, possibly because the huge number of animals crammed inside the small cages made it hard to count them, anyway, after the first listing we had about 65 animals... Unfortunately we had some causalities, at least two males were apparently killed and some critters succumbed to URIs, the last girl that we lost died after two nights in the vet from pneumonia... It was very frustrating to find dead animals almost every day 

So we now have 51 ratz, more females than males but I have seen some of the females go into heat which is a good thing... 
It looks as though most pregnant rats reabsorbed their babies because some of the animals with bigger bellies just seemed to loose them within a night or two...

All animals continue to gain weight and I no longer see squared tails! On the 4th of March, many of the rats had gain close to 70g!!!

It seems like we'll be able to adopt almost all (if not all) of the rats, and the males will be going to their homes starting tomorrow! We will keep the females for a week more or two to ensure they are definitely not pregnant...

We received a few donations from cages to polar fleece, toys, food and litter which helped a lot and took some of the weight off our shoulders...

We also made a flyer about rats in Portuguese to try and inform people, as there is a lot of prejudice against rats here and not many people know them as pets...

tl;dr: it's looking brighter now


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## Ratbag (Nov 30, 2013)

What a wonderful thing you did/are doing for those poor creatures. 

I wish I had read this thread earlier. Do you still need help in the way of donations?


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## Borntorodeo (Feb 28, 2014)

Bless you for doing all you can! Those rats would have never had a chance if it weren't for you guys!


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## BasmatiRice (Feb 11, 2012)

We are always in need of bedding/litter and food, specially rat food, like lab blocks (which are almost over) or other complete flood like Rat Complete from Versele-laga (which is the one I can get here) for example. All this type of donations are very much welcome! Any spare cages that people might have laying around are also welcome although I hope we get some empty cages as soon as the male rats start going to their new homes...

The guy that as been taking daily care of the rats (twice a day!) thinks there are a few pregnant females... he took one home and gave me another female that he thinks is pregnant to take care of (although she doesn't look pregnant at all...) until the babies come or for about a week or two if nothing happens  there are more possibly pregnant females where the rats are being kept but they have been separated for observation.

I just hope we can change the way people look at rats... Maybe if rats had a closer status to cats and dogs as pets they would've been taken proper care from the beginning, the lack of organization behind all this is almost scary and it makes me sad... I'm glad we are able to protect them and that they'll go to good homes, but the dogs have been in their definite homes for almost a month now


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## Ratbag (Nov 30, 2013)

Could you PM me an address where I can have stuff shipped to? 

I use the Zooplus site a lot and they ship to Portugal. I will be happy to have a delivery sent your way.


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## Gannyaan (Dec 7, 2012)

I'll be doing the same- can you please PM me the address and name to ship to ? Also, if you can send me a website where I can order supplies/food from in Portugal , it would be easier than tryin to translate  

If anyone else in the US wants to contribute , let me know, that way we can combine orders and save on shipping...


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## Andyurgay (Jun 10, 2013)

I might be able to help out this Friday, depending on shipping and if I need to get one of my guys into the vet. But id love to help out if I can.


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## Gannyaan (Dec 7, 2012)

It would be in a week or so- I'll ask again!  when I get my money in ...


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## BasmatiRice (Feb 11, 2012)

I sent a PM do Ratbag and Gannyaan  thank you, from to bottom of my heart!


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## Ratbag (Nov 30, 2013)

I've ordered some stuff to be sent over from Amazon.co.uk - the shipping is free if you choose a product sold by Amazon UK themselves rather than a seller trading through Amazon (I ordered food, I hope it's okay but there wasn't much choice sold only from Amazon itself).

Make sure it's the UK site, not Amazon.com.....

I have also made an order from Zooplus.com who ship to Portugal for a low cost, I think it's cost only 10 euros or less to have a package with hemp bedding and bottles shipped over.


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## Gannyaan (Dec 7, 2012)

That's so nice of you! Ill likely send food as well.. Dozens of rats must eat by the truck load, so I don't think they can have too much. Thanks for the websites! 


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## BasmatiRice (Feb 11, 2012)

Thank you so so much  I can't thank you enough, I'm don't even know what to say lol, I'm really really happy right now! 

I promise to post pics of the critters with their new gifts!  thank you very very very much


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## BasmatiRice (Feb 11, 2012)

Just a small clip from one of the females we rescued  She's been home with me these past few days because the guy who's taking daily care of them though she might've been pregnant... I don't think so, but she does behave more like a boy! I had never handled a female this lazy


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## Gannyaan (Dec 7, 2012)

BasmatiRice said:


> Just a small clip from one of the females we rescued  She's been home with me these past few days because the guy who's taking daily care of them though she might've been pregnant... I don't think so, but she does behave more like a boy! I had never handled a female this lazy


Adorable!! <3 she loves her massage haha 


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## Andyurgay (Jun 10, 2013)

Oh goodness she is precious! I'd take her in a heart beat if I could! Is that her making the clicking sound? Cuuuute. I hope the gifts are helping. I just got paid tonight so after I check how much it was tomorrow I'll be ordering some things. What exactly do you need the most right now?


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## Hey-Fay (Jul 8, 2013)

She is so precious! If there was any way for me to adopt I would gladly take two off your hands. Once I get my taxes back I'll see what I can do about some supplies and send them your way.


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## BasmatiRice (Feb 11, 2012)

Yep, strangely they are all this calm and I haven't found one (male or female) that doesn't like being petted! We think that maybe the does are this calm because they didn't have much water or food to survive so they had to adapt somehow... They sleep a lot and drink so little that I check them to see if they're hydrated every time I go by :/ it's a bit weird and sad really...

Today we had 10 rats going to their definite homes (4 males (2 pairs) and six females (3 to each family) )   



Andyurgay said:


> Oh goodness she is precious! I'd take her in a heart beat if I could! Is that her making the clicking sound? Cuuuute. I hope the gifts are helping. I just got paid tonight so after I check how much it was tomorrow I'll be ordering some things. What exactly do you need the most right now?


Well, we are receiving 2.5Kg of rat food tomorrow and 10Kg from Ratbag anytime soon (thank you  ), and we just sent 10 rats to their homes, and two more are leaving tomorrow as well, so I think we can make it last for a bit now... We are short on lab blocks (which I like to give them because we can't control if they are picking only the tasty parts of the mix, but I'm sure they are eating the blocks, so I know they get everything they need nutritionally speaking) and although we are receiving a 100L bag of bedding from Ratbag as well, we are always in need of litter/bedding (it disappears so fast...), so any of those will always help...

I'm so happy we are able to give at least some of them good homes and loving families!  I was so worried we wouldn't be able to adopt any because of the way people talk about rats, I'm a lot more positive now  

Thank you so much for wanting to help!


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