overweight rat, how to get to excercise?

[lis16420]

My rat is really fat. Lol, I am wondering if anyone has any good excercise tips? I let her run around my room, but she seems to just like to sit in one spot. How do I get her to excercise? She doesn't really run in a wheel either. She's a lazy rat... Her sister is pretty skinny, so I don't know if maybe her overweightness could be a sign of another problem? (Her sister is her actual biological sister.)

 

[KTyne]

My rats love chasing keys when you shake them, or paper towel, or a feather toy. Cat toys are awsome!!
If it makes noise and moves I think she'll chase it.

 

[Moon]

feather toys work on a lot of rats!

 

[Godmother]

If you can't get her to chase after things or to run around, you could always see whether she would enjoy pea fishing. That requires a lot of movement, even though the calories in are at least as much as the calories out!

Whenever I have had a rat that is fatter and more inactive than its siblings, it has turned out to be a sign of another problem. My Melissa was the only one of the five sisters who never climbed my pant legs when I was cage cleaning. Her mama would climb me from feet to shoulders at least a dozen times during out time. Melissa had recurrent respiratory problems and eventually was diagnosed with heart problems.

I don't think that females are typically lazy; they are curious and usually active.

 

[Cinderwolf]

If you have levels in their cage, you could take away the ramps, forcing them to either jump or climb up the walls to get the leves. you could also put the food on the top shelf, so they have to climb to get the food.

 

[MomRat]

What sort of diet are you feeding? It's possible, if there is much variety, that she is overeating something and that is causing her overweightness. You could also add more ruffage(lettuce, spinach, kale, greens) so that her overall protein and fat are lowered.

Unfortunately, its a fact that at the end of many experiments(most notably college and highschool) people take their rats home(if they have any compassion at all) and unfortunately also, these rats may end up in the gene pool by being given to irresponsible owners or feeder breeders or petstores. Plenty of rats carry the Zucker gene, and when the right pair is bred, it can manifest, and boom, massively overweight rats. I occasionally wonder if Quilt was a Zucker, he was active and ate 2014 and veggies along with the rest of our crew, but he was blurby. =/

 

[Godmother]

Momrat said, "Plenty of rats carry the Zucker gene, and when the right pair is bred, it can manifest,". That is something I'd never thought of. I once had a rat who was fine until he was almost two, then he gained massive amounts of weight ... went from about 650g to 900g in a couple of months. He was eating the same food as everyone else. SQ had a ratty who suddenly gained a lot of weight when she was around two. She looked like one of those rats in textbooks, where the satiation centre is not functioning. Turned out she had a neurological problem.