Rats and grass

[knuckles]

Do I remember reading somewhere that rats enjoy that grass that you can buy at a pet store for cats??

[Bilge Rat]

Mine totally love it.  They tear it up, eat it, spread it around and make nests out of it, etc...   Hours of fun.  The stuff they sell for cats is just wheatgrass though, and you can get a dense little pot of it for $0.99 at the grocery store that's actually a little thicker than the Petgrass you see at the pet store and it's a lot cheaper.

[scout]

Absolutely! I get mine from our juice bar after all the grass has been cut, leave it in a plastic tub in my sun room with a little water and in a few days I have a field of organic grass for the rats to play in! They especially like it when it's hot out since it cools their little feet.

[knuckles]

I went ahead and bought a small pot of the grass at the pet store today.  So far, the pot islaying on its side in the litter box, with have the grass sheared off covering the rest of the litter box.  Oh but they had a good time doing it..

[Maggie's Mom]

Are we talkin weed grass, or kentucky blue grass grass?  He-he.  I hear if you blow a puff of weed smoke into a rat's face it'll be stoned for 2 days.  I hear it's funny to watch, but I'd never do it being I'm not a pot smoker, and it's probably not to healthy for them.  Just thought I'd ask

[Grace Jr]

lol  I can't imagine a stoned rat...  Some of Ben's friends (a good friend of mine) were druggies, and we'd go over to their apartment on holidays to hang out.  And boy, did pot smell weird!  I can't see how anyone would want to smoke something that smells like that!  But, they were really cool about it though.  They only did stuff on the porch, so other people who didn't smoke or had ashma or allergies wouldn't be affected by it.  Course, you could still smell it when they opened the door back up (it was a screened in poirch), but it was't like they were doing stuff in the same room as you.

[Ray]

My books say grass is a great supplement to normal bedding, as it can be used to make nests.  But if you get it from your yard you must clean it to get bugs off.  I got some for my first rat, he pulled it into his shoebox and ate it (The grass, not the shoebox ).  I'm not sure if that's bad, but it never hurt him.  He was an oddball rat anyway (as far as rats go), so I don't think that is normal behavior.  Overall, I would say adding a little grass to your standard bedding wouldn't hurt, and the ratties would probably like it.

[Suebee]

Mine get wheatgrass, and they LOVE it.

I prefer to buy the seeds and grow it myself, though, because you don't know how long the PetGrass in the store has been sitting there. You want it to be as fresh as possible, because once it starts to brown, it's all over.  

Joking about "weed" and lawn grass aside, wheatgrass or catgrass really are the only kinds of grass you should feed them...