# Rat hoarding food and being aggressive toward cage mate during feeding time



## autumnrek23 (Dec 8, 2011)

Whenever it is feeding time for my rats, my rat Bey tries to hoard all of the food and then scares off Tchai (my other rat in the same cage) when he comes near the food. Tchai is now at the point where he runs upstairs and is scared of Bey. Sometimes Bey will even run upstairs to steal Tchai's food. I haven't seen this behavior going on until the last week. They are around 6 months old. I'm not sure how to stop this behavior and I want to make sure that Tchai is getting enough food. It's not fair he has to run in fear when it's feeding time. I'm not sure what to do about this problem or if it's even fixable. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated. =)


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## cagedbirdsinging (May 28, 2012)

Do you feed from a dish? Employing a scatter feeding method makes it all but impossible for any one rat to hog the food and prevent others from getting their fair share.


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## binkyhoo (Sep 28, 2008)

cagedbirdsinging said:


> Do you feed from a dish? Employing a scatter feeding method makes it all but impossible for any one rat to hog the food and prevent others from getting their fair share.


Yup. That works for me too. I have a shy nice lil gal and a big food bully. It used to be so easy when I could give them both a hunk of vegetable a peice. Now i cut it up into small peices and that along with there oxbow rat kibble I toss it all over the place. By the time food bully finds all the kibble to hoard little shy nice gal has had time enough to eat.


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