# How to tell if a rat's overweight?



## ratorical (Aug 19, 2015)

I think my boys are getting kind of chubby. How can you tell if they're overweight?


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

It sounds like a pretty simple answer, basically if they look fat or pudgy they most likely are overweight... but do keep in mind that many rats are actually bred for meat, they are genetically programmed to grow quickly and get fat. I'm not saying it's healthy, but it's normal. For the most part these rats act like you are starving them to death when you try and put them on a "healthy" diet.

On the other hand some rats will stay fit and trim their whole lives regardless of what food you offer them. 

I'd say the same is true of humans, some have a tendency to get portly while others tend to remain thin.. I'm not entirely sure that the perfect body weight or BMI for every human or rat should be the same. 

I tend to go by shoulder width, rats with wide shoulders (as compared to their hips) tend to get pudgier, they are more likely to be rats bred for meat. They also tend to grow faster and get larger and the females at least seem more susceptible to multiple mammary tumors when they get older. There's a lot of debate about keeping rats like this on a "healthy" diet... honestly, I don't know if it helps. I don't know if anyone can really beat genetics in the long run.


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## moonkissed (Dec 26, 2011)

It can be hard to tell for sure for some people. owners often get blinders on when it comes to if their beloved pet is a fatty or not lol

You can always post a pic and ask what others think. 

Females should be sleek & trim. Long slender lovely bodies.
Males are going to be a bit bigger and with them being prone to being lazier alittle bit squishy. 
Older rats may get a bit more squishy that comes with old age.

If the rat looks like it is having trouble walking, climbing, getting around, or has rolls it is a problem. If their head looks like a tiny little dot on a massive body its really bad lol I honestly don't think a bit of squishyness is a problem with boys but u do have to watch it.

I disagree that genetics play as big a role as some may suggest. While size surely does and a rat may be more meatier, or even have a bit more fat. It is kindof the difference between a bit of muffin top and an obese human. An unhealthy overweight rat is going to be caused by either diet, exercise or health issues. It is not ok IMO.

I have had many different rats from far different sources. Every single one of my rats is of a healthy weight and size. My very first rat got a bit overweight and as soon as I changed her diet she lost the weight.

Diet does play a big role. Look at what they are eating. What brand of food are you feeding? Seed mixes are often packed full of fattening well seeds lol We also tend to do the whole food = love thing with our pets and overfeed them. Setting up feeding puzzles that make them work for their food.

As boys mature it is alot harder for them to be active as well. You can play around with their cage to make it more active- remove ramps and shelves and add in more climbing stuff. Give them more free range time and make it where they need to climb and run.

Yay you though caring about their weight and trying to help before it is a problem!!! That is what I love to see.


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## ratorical (Aug 19, 2015)

Thanks for all your super helpful responses! I'm gonna put some pictures of dear old Loki here for you guys to judge. I think he may just be a large rat and at a normal weight? I just wanna make sure I'm not over feeding them or doing something wrong!


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## JAnimal (Jul 23, 2014)

Loki looks normal to me. Rats to me especially because i have boys they are always going to look somewhat pudgy. Kinda like a pug. Pugs are not bred to be very skinny. And nether are alot of small mammals.


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## kksrats (Jul 25, 2014)

moonkissed said:


> I disagree that genetics play as big a role as some may suggest.


I disagree with this after having worked in diabetes and metabolism research. Yes, diet can be the factor that induces metabolic changes that lead to obesity, but the underlying genetics is what determine exactly how fat a person or animal will become from that diet. 

I ran into a diagram for rats a while back that reminded me of the diagrams they put on some bags of dog food which show healthy body proportions. I can't seem to find it now and it's a little harder to decipher since rats naturally hunch, but it was kind of neat. I used to scatter feed my boys so that they actually had to work for their food. It's also a good idea to not free feed males and to put their food on a level where they don't tend to sleep.


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## Finnebon (Jul 15, 2013)

Despite almost never ever getting treats, and eating the same food his 3 other cagemates do, I have one boy who is pretty obese. He has flabs of fat around the backs of his arms and lower belly in front of his legs. Not sure how to help him lose weight! He does get free range time, and will run in their wheel sometimes, but still is a little chub! He's aways been the biggest baby, even since birth. 

When you have your rats out and they're running around, get on floor level and see if they have flabbyness hanging off them. The rat in those pictures looks perfect to me though, even almost a healthy lean for an adult boy.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

We used to adopt rats from the same feeder bin, and all of the rats from the same breeder porked up and I might add that they also got multiple mammary tumors when they got older. Our part wild rat and out "show" rat were very different sizes but eating the same diet neither ever got pudgy much less fat. Our current rats are from a breeder that crossed two strains, he started out with a top quality large show male and crossed him with a strain of small meat rat girls. They do tend to get pudgy, but stay small and so far no mammary tumors. I might add that pudgy for a small rat girl is about a pound, not 21 oz that our larger commercially bred for meat feeder rat girls reached. They also grow much more slowly.

When it comes to domestic rats, we'd be naive to think that at some point just about all of them are the product of selective breeding. The commercial rat farm that bred our meat rats would have naturally selected breeders that grew fast and got large. They made more money on jumbo rats and the faster that the rats grew the faster they turned a profit. For show rats, size and trimness counts to win points and as my current rat breeder is also mostly an exotic snake breeder, small slow growing rats are better for baby and young snakes, so he's selecting for smaller and slower growing as well as other desirable traits like health, as he keeps his breeders around longer as pets for his daughter and doesn't want to deal with sick rats.

So, yes, I tend to believe that a good diet and calorie control will help keep any rat trimmer and likely healthier the tendency to pork up is very much genetic and the product of selective breeding. Our part wild girl was about the smallest sleekest girl we ever had and when she go a bit heavier, she actually put herself on a diet and lost weight even though there was plenty of food available and she almost looked too thin. I might add that having seen other wild girls, she stayed a similar size and body shape to them, even though she had unlimited food.

There's a reason many domestic rats get large or grow fast or get fat... it's selective breeding over many generations. And wild rats (for the most part) tend to stay trim and smaller because of natural selection. 

I'm going to add one footnote, that I can't prove... I'm given to understand that dwarf rats typically don't get mammary tumors, and I found that all of our big bred for meat rats tend to all get multiple mammary tumors. So there may be a correlation between growth hormone levels and tumors. If this is true, diet may be even less important than we tend to think it is. Basically the best rats for a commercial rat breeder are also pretty much doomed to a shorter life and a bitter end at birth. 

I know we're not going to resolve the nature - nurture debate here today, and taken the wrong way it can become an excuse for bad rat nutrition, which I don't want to do... but I think that rat owners should realize that some rats are going to be naturally larger and pudgier than some others and it's not necessarily because they aren't being properly fed.


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