Buried Food Dishes & Food Stashed in Certain Hammocks

Why must rats bury their food?? I have 2 large dishes of food in my double CN ..my CN is also full of aspen shavings because I have the metal pans. Everyday I clean out the food dish, and when I get up the next day ..the dish just looks like a mountain of shavings + every single toy in the cage is laid on top of it! ..I'm pretty sure I have it pin pointed down to the girls and Teddy ..whats the deal?

Another thing they do is, stash half the food before they bury the dish with some food left in it. They only stash food in cube hammocks and tubes!

They leave the Harlan in the dishes and bury it, and they stash the extrusion in cubes and tubes ..why?

 

[Petunia]

why??
because they're rats
:laugh4:


their stashing and hoarding behavior is one of the things I find most endearing about them.

the hide their food for the same reason any animal would, so others can't get it

they cover it up so that predators aren't attracted to it, and thus to them.

putting it in a covered cube or covering it over just makes sense if you want to hide something, right?

:giggle:

rats are so smart and soooo freakin cute!

when my kids are being lazy sometimes I move their stash and they happily run to me and one by one take all their lab blocks back to stash away, usually in the same spot, sometimes a different one, depending on which rat is stashing (some of my girls are smarter than others LOL)

they look so happy when they are bounding away with their "prize"

most fun a two legged critter can have, watching the four legged ones dash n stash
:nod:

 

haha as cute as it is, sometimes it gets annoying LOL ..esp when they push half the shavings out on the floor from trying to bury the food dish!

I find it funny how they bury one kind, and hid the other :giggle:

 

[Petunia]

haha as cute as it is, sometimes it gets annoying LOL ..esp when they push half the shavings out on the floor from trying to bury the food dish!

I find it funny how they bury one kind, and hid the other :giggle:

yeh that's why I don't use shavings, what a mess those can make. My girls will drag fleece scraps over to cover up their food, as well as using toys and whatever else might be handy

what I find annoying is the flinging the poops out of the cage! :roll: :giggle:
I haven't been able to catch who is doing it, but I'll be in the room puttering around and a raisin will come flying out of the cage :lol:

I'd love to see how they are tossing them out........overhand? under hand? shoving them out with their feet? what????
:giggle:

and they always like to poop at the bottom- and now the TOP too! of the ramps in the CN cage

what's up with that? LOL

I had them all litter box trained but switched litters and in protest, they went back to pooping where ever they want to.
even switching back to their favorite litter didn't work
sigh

but they are so adorable................ :heart: :heart: :heart:

 

I have to use shavings bc I have chewers LOL ..but my cage has the high pans that I got from FTC!

My don't fling poop than god :giggle:

Toby, Oscar and Scamp don't bother with stashing or bury food, but the other 5 do haha

 

[M0onkist]

The scatter guards you can get for the lower level of the CN (they also have an 'upper' one for if you have a double CN) are *really* great at keeping raisins from flying - trust me, I know! I think the girls play baseball with them, I seriously do... but since installing the scatter guards I'm down to 1-2 raisins on the floor per day, and NO lab blocks in unreachable areas, yippee!

P.S.: the shipping from ferret.com is expensive, but that's the only place I've found that carries the scatter guards, and they're worth it!

 

These are the ones I have, for top and bottom.

http://www.chinchilla.ca/items.php?Prod ... urce=acces

 

[Petunia]

The scatter guards you can get for the lower level of the CN (they also have an 'upper' one for if you have a double CN) are *really* great at keeping raisins from flying - trust me, I know! I think the girls play baseball with them, I seriously do... but since installing the scatter guards I'm down to 1-2 raisins on the floor per day, and NO lab blocks in unreachable areas, yippee!

P.S.: the shipping from ferret.com is expensive, but that's the only place I've found that carries the scatter guards, and they're worth it!

the ones for the Ferret Nation fit the Critter Nation? I thought those two cages were slightly different sizes

I sure could use the one for the top level of the double CN, that's where most of the raisins originate LOL
they don't seem to poop much in the bottom level; in fact only one girl spends time down there when the cage is closed up

the rest only go down when the door is open and they are running in and out :roll:

 

[M0onkist]

Yep, they're made for both - or at the very least the kind I got are compatible with my single-level CN...
http://www.ferret.com/item/ferret-natio ... rd/650415/

They don't have one for the half-levels, sadly, but at least this helps out a lot. I imagine the pans from FTC perform the same function (just in a different way).