# Water additive to cut down on stinky rat smell?



## WinonaGun42 (Feb 2, 2013)

My girls smell pretty good. With the daily wipe down of the cage and frequent fleece changes, you couldn't smell that there were rats in the house. 

My new boy STINKS. Since he is in the back office of the house, my boyfriend has been complaining that my new boy has quite a stench to him. My boyfriend is starting to call Helo "Flower" (the skunk from Bambi) and Pepe Le Pew.
I bathed my new boy, Helo and super cleaned his cage when he got here. I replace all the fleece every other day and wipe down his cage daily. I even wipe him down daily with baby wipes. Helo is resistant to litter training, so I am changing the care fresh bedding every 3-4 days. He still stinks like mad. 
He is a very BIG boy that can obviously produce a lot of testosterone. Helo has a poor coat and flaky skin problem that my vet said was probably due to his previous bad diet. Had him tested for mites and he came up clean in that regard. On a new diet, I can already see a change in his coat for the better, but his poop and urine are still extremely stinky.
Due to the fact that my boyfriend owns the house and doesn't like the smell, I need to do something about this overpowering odor before he decides that Helo has to go. My Boyfriend's main rule about keeping rats was that he didn't want to have to deal with a bad smell. He loves the girls, but said that he is giving me a little time to bring down Helo's odor because he can see I am taking very good care of him.

There is a product out there for "small animals" that you add to the water to cut down on the waste smell. It is called Bi-Odor by Marshall. Is this safe for rats? Has anyone tried giving this to their rats? Is there a better product that can help reduce the smell?
Will Helo's neutering next week help to cut down on the smell?
Should I be changing the fleece and bedding so much?

Thanks for any help you can give. I just hope I can make Helo less stinky. He is such a sweetie. I would hate to have to give him up.


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## Phantom (Apr 4, 2012)

My boyfriend and I tried that product back when we had mice and when we first got Molly. It's an okay product, but I wouldn't use it again. It cut down on their smell, but not by much. The reason why I wouldn't buy it again is because it had certain behavior effects on our mice and Molly. The mice ended up becoming really aggressive, and Molly started a habit of really hard nibbling. Once we took the product out of their water everything went back to normal though after about a week.

Edit: I think I'll agree with your vet a bit on this one, it could be his diet. I just recently switched my girls over to Oxbow, and they smell so much better.


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## Jokerfest (Sep 25, 2012)

Well one thing that will help is switching from carefresh to yesterdays news. (Besides care fresh is super dusty)
I've used both and carefresh doesn't do a very good job at keeping odor down.
Just from switching my bedding I noticed a huge change in the smell from my boys cage.

I wouldn't personally put anything in my own rats water because I'd be afraid it would change the taste and they wouldn't drink as much as they need.

How long has he been on his new diet? Could take a little while or his system to adjust.


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## cagedbirdsinging (May 28, 2012)

I think it's an issue with the past diet and it should sort out over time.

As for the product, I used it with my gerbils when I was in college and knew nothing about rodents other than the fact that mine stank (due to bad diet, no doubt). It did work rather amazingly, but I can't say that I would put it in my boys' water at this point in my experience.


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## katlovesaandw (Feb 10, 2013)

I am in same boat as you, but it is the girls that stink in this house. My boy is a delight.
The girls smell. ALWAYS!
They smell, their cage smells. I am about at my wits end with this.
They all eat same food. They all have aspen bedding.
We switched the solid plastic shelves for hardware cloth ones so pee and poop would drop to bottom.
They pee and poo on each other.
Someone on the board mentioned this stuff. I am willing to try anything at this point, otherwise....hubby may insist we cut down on number of rats. 
I clean cage 100% once a week. I wipe stuff daily. Girls cage starts to smell within 2 days of total cleaning.


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## missinasworld (Feb 1, 2013)

i use the goodbye odor on my rats and ferrets, tried it on mice but it didn't work as well. It takes a few weeks to a month before you can tell a differance in the smell of the rats. And if you miss a day, or worse a few days, the smell comes right back. I buy it in the 32oz bottles and sometimes in the 1 gallon bottles. 

Missina
http://missina.net/


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## PeachPeach (Jun 22, 2012)

Carefresh stinks! Half the smell of my boys turned out to be the bedding, not them! If they have too much fresh fruit they can get stinky, but otherwise I'd say their odor is pretty mild. Even if they stunk I'm not sure I'd do a water additive, though, since I don't want to discourage their water drinking if they don't like the flavor of the additive.


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## WinonaGun42 (Feb 2, 2013)

Thanks for the input. I am going to try the Bi-Odor (for now) and a healthy diet, mixed with a lot of cage cleaning and wiping his stinky butt with baby wipes. He doesn't appear to produce much "buck grease" but he is always washing himself and I feel he is still a bit young.

As for Yesterday's News, I use that for my litter pans and he doesn't seem to like it. He will poop in the opposite corner from the litter pan, no matter how much I move the pan. (I put pan in corner 1 and he goes in corner 2. I move litter pan to corner 2 and he goes in corner 1. So frustrating.) LOL. Maybe I should switch the Yesterday's News to the bottom of the cage and put the Carefresh in the litter pan. 

With his really poor diet and the fact that I think his cage wasn't cleaned very often before he came to me, I think it just might be a build-up of all of that. I don't want to stress him or his dry coat out with another bath just yet, so I'm probably just chipping away at the accumulated stinky-ness little by little. Hopefully it improves soon.


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## PeachPeach (Jun 22, 2012)

In our case, when the cage was clean and the diet was right, within a few days they'd groomed themselves enough that they didn't smell much, no bath was needed


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