# is it okay to use a water dish instead of a bottle?



## pigletxdobbyxbuttons (Feb 15, 2014)

My boys have a large ferret cage, its amazing and huge and so tall, but the bar spacing was large so I had to use hardware cloth, they are very young. A water bottle will not attach and the nozzle won't even fit through the hardware cloth. So I have two ceramic dishes I use for water. Do you think this is unhealthy. I change their water often but it is always getting stuff in it, their little pieces of fabric they play with sometimes gets in it, food always gets in it, and occasionally I'll find a piece of poop in it. I always clean it often, but I'm wondering do you think they could get sick?


----------



## Ladyfish_xx (Feb 26, 2013)

There's no way you can maybe cut a little hole just big enough for a water bottle nozzle to poke through? I've always used glass bottles, so can't speak for dishes, but I wouldn't want their drinking water just sitting out in the open all the time. Idk what hardware cloth is, but is it on the outside or inside of the cage? I have a couple of bottles that attach from the inside, and a few that attach from the outside. You could probably find one that would work for ya


----------



## jooleeah (Sep 3, 2010)

As long as the rats have their water, they'll figure it out! With the dishes theres a higher chance of them getting dirty, so you'll probably have to change it daily or a few times a day if you see things floating around in it. I had dishes once upon a time but i noticed my boys were peeing in them so i switched back to the bottles. Im going to assume if you find pee or raisins in the dish then theres the risk of them getting sick, just like if there was pee or poop in our drinking water. I find the younger the rats the lest respect they have for the bowls haha. Maybe see if you can get a dish that hangs off the cage somehow? nothing that'll go too high up but high enough so that they cant get bedding in it? Idk, just an idea.


----------



## pigletxdobbyxbuttons (Feb 15, 2014)

Yes i could cut a hole, I'm an idiot lol. But even if I did it won't attach to it. The hardware cloth is on the outside, it's like coated wire with little square holes. I didn't know there was bottles that attach from the inside. Will definitely look into that thank you


----------



## pigletxdobbyxbuttons (Feb 15, 2014)

They have never peed in it, for some reason they only pee on the bottom floor with their bedding, which is awesome, and they dont take their bedding up from the bottom either. But they do poop every where and occasionally a piece gets in it, I clean it a lot, but you're both right they probably could get sick, the dish that hangs off is a good idea too. Thanks guys


----------



## Ladyfish_xx (Feb 26, 2013)

Yep, there are! It doesn't say that these are inside cage mounted, but I have two of these carrot floater glass bottles, and both came with a wire metal mount thing that works inside the cage and is way easier than the outside springy clippy ones. This website is always pretty cheap and has good stuff!! http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=6067+10382+22733&pcatid=22733


----------



## pigletxdobbyxbuttons (Feb 15, 2014)

Awesome I'll check it out thanks for all your help!!


----------



## MimiSkye (Feb 3, 2014)

Be carefullll, I was going to do that because I was waiting for my water bottle to arrive in the mail (I was bringing a new baby home and she had to be in a seperate cage). I was about to fill a shallow cup with some water but my friend was there at the time and she had worked at a local petstore and she said so many hamsters and mice have died from drowning thats why they always use bottles.

But then again my girl was a baby, full grown rats I'm sure know better and can figure it out.


----------



## Phantom (Apr 4, 2012)

I have both a water bottle and a water bowl in my cage. The water bottle I have attaches easily inside my cage without me having to cut any holes in the hardware cloth. The water bowl I have has a metal frame to hold it in place which fits through the hardware cloth so I do not have to cut a hole. I change the water in the bowl every day. The water bottle is for emergencies, but they almost never use it. I still replace the water in the bottle every week though. 

This is the water bottle I use. I got it at my local petco. 
http://www.petco.com/product/102311/Super-Pet-Chew-Proof-Water-Bottle.aspx?CoreCat=OnSiteSearch

This is the water bowl I use.
http://www.petco.com/product/14434/Petco-Stainless-Steel-Coop-Cup-with-Clamp.aspx?CoreCat=certona-_-ProductListTopRated_Bird_3-_-Petco%20Stainless%20Steel%20Coop%20Cup%20with%20Clamp-14434


----------



## alexn (Sep 30, 2012)

While theoretically it is possible for them to drown, it'd be extremely unlikely. I generally stay away from bowls purely because you (imo) need to change them every few hours to prevent dirt, spillages, contamination etc. Plus my girls love burying their bowls, so it'd be useless after five minutes.

Sent from Petguide.com Free App


----------



## MimiSkye (Feb 3, 2014)

alexn said:


> While theoretically it is possible for them to drown, it'd be extremely unlikely. I generally stay away from bowls purely because you (imo) need to change them every few hours to prevent dirt, spillages, contamination etc. Plus my girls love burying their bowls, so it'd be useless after five minutes.
> 
> Sent from Petguide.com Free App


Thats what I thought, but since my girl was so small (she was a dwarf baby, so she was extra tiny), I just didn't want to risk it. Plus she kept having to stand ontop of the bowl just to reach they water so it was making me nervous she might accidentally fall in or somehow get stuck. I assume young rats and adults would be just fine. They're smart and strong enough to lift themselves out.


----------



## pigletxdobbyxbuttons (Feb 15, 2014)

Cool I'll check out the water bottle! The two dishes aren't very tall and my boys have already grown so much I'm not concerned about them drowning , but I do have to clean it many times a day


----------



## Leraine (Feb 21, 2014)

I use a water dish just fine. My rat figured it out even though previously she was using a water bottle. I prefer to use a water dish, because all the water bottles I've seen in the pet store have some sort of plastic in them (even the glass water bottle had plastic inside the mechanism that contained the ball). There's ample evidence out there that plastics (even BPA free plastics) can be carcinogenic in humans. Given how prone female rats are to tumors, I'd prefer to play it on the safe side. And since many of the plastic bottles inside the pet store aren't labelled as BPA-free, I opted for a ceramic water bowl. 

I change it often, and I just wash it out with regular dish soap. She used to fling litter and food into it, but now that I put it on a different floor than her litter box and food bowl, it stays clean. I have heard of some people putting in water for their rats to cool down in on hot days. I don't think she can drown in it, because of the way the bowl is shaped, and because I don't fill it up very deep. It's helped her to wash sticky honey off her paws before. 

Given how quickly the water in my own personal glass water bottle can get funky, I imagine the bowl is a lot more convenient to wash. I just use a sponge and some dish soap, and the shape makes rinsing simple. But with the glass water bottle I bought in the pet store, the opening was too narrow for me to even get a bottle brush in there, let alone my finger and a sponge, so rinsing would probably have been more of a pain.

If you are concerned about whether or not your rats will figure out how to use a water bowl, I was concerned too, but my rat took to it immediately. Afterwards, I realized that in the wild, rats probably don't encounter upside-down water bottles with a ball-drip-dispenser mechanism as often as they encounter puddles or other bodies of water.  If a wild rat can figure it out, I'm sure your clever domestic rats can.


----------

