Games To Play With Rats

Rats are very playful creatures, they are social so enjoy playing together and are also very intelligent and curious.

Thinking of games to play with your rats isn’t easy sometimes. Perhaps you are thinking too hard about it – or perhaps you just can’t think of something simple to do with things already around the house?

There are some great products you can buy in stores for rats to play with – and not only in the rat or rodent section – try looking in the parrot or large bird section. There are loads of exciting and brightly colored toys and things right there.

Anyway – back home and thinking of something fun to play with your rats without any shopping – how about these three things:

Games For Rats: Pea Fishing

Rats love peas and even more they love pea fishing.

This is a great game for hot weather too – as it is really refreshing and your rats won’t mind dipping their toes in the cool water either on a lovely hot afternoon.

So how does pea fishing work – you are asking?

Well, all you need is a shallow dish (that you can fit through the door to your rat enclosure), some cool water and some frozen peas! Simple eh?

You can also add frozen sweet corn for a change – as they love this too (although clearly we need to rethink the game name).

Anyway, simply place the dish in their cage (or in their run around the home), fill with water, tip in the peas or corn – then just stand back and watch the fun.

If you have a large enough dish you may even see the brave ones go right in and paddle!

Games For Rats: Cardboard Box Mazes

Rats are naturally very inquisitive and like nothing better than to investigate a cardboard box maze.

Being inside something and investigating new places is something your rats can’t seem to resist – especially if your whole group are in the maze together, figuring things out as a team.

It’s really easy to do as we all have spare cardboard boxes – in all shapes and sizes – and things like Kleenex boxes make great dead ends.

So ask around with your friends and start saving up some different sized boxes for your maze. Using some scissors and gaffer tape – stick them all together – linking them to each other with ratty sized holes in between.

If they live in a big enough enclosure you could leave your cardboard box maze in there for them to navigate around for a few days – or just have a great set up in a run or other safe place around the house that they can go back to time and again (well, until it is pooped in to many times of course).

To make it even more interesting you can hide treats inside or leave them some shredded paper or tissues to make a nest from?

Games For Rats: Ratty Digging Box

Another favourite thing rats love to do is dig.

The type of digging box you make depends on how ingenious you want to be there are no rules here!

A basic digging box would be made using a strong cardboard box with rat sized holes half way up each side. Fill this jumbo container to just under half-way with either Finacard (a shredded and chopped cardboard substrate) and mix in some tasty treats for your rats to find amongst the debris.

A more elaborate digging box would be made from a plastic tub with holes in the lid. As with the cardboard one make holes half way up the sides (ensuring they are smooth of course – you don’t want to scratch your ratties by accident as they climb in and out).

As this tub is longer lasting and waterproof – you can fill it half way with sterilised soil and sprinkle a handful of birdseed – like canary mix – onto the soil a few days before play time. Water lightly and wait for it to sprout before releasing you rats for loads of fun!

Why not even add little treats into the mix – but in tiny other boxes or wrapped in kitchen roll parcels – so they have a puzzle within a puzzle?