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Generally speaking the natal rats need a bigger cage than
their size imply, they eat seeds and insects in nature plus loves vegetables. (Mine eat hay, hard bread, millet and carrots with delight.) These animals are highly social animals and should never be kept alone. Handle them gently and never lift them in the tail.
Natal rats are generally the same size as gerbils.
Mine loves lots of hay, a big slice of cucumber, carrot or some sallad leaves every day and, of course, millet. They also like rolled oats, sunflower seeds, bird seed for small birds (especially brands with lots of millet in them) and hard bread. They love vegetables. A group of about ten young natal rats easily eats a whole carrot in just a few days.
After a while I stopped almost totally to give them sunflower seeds, since their furs deteriorate in condition very fast when they are given foods with such large amounts of fat in them.
Minimum cage size is 60 cm long (2 feet long).
These animals can't really be kept in any kind of small plastic cage, since they can easily gnaw holes in plastic cages - and they do if the cage is small! If you put them in a too small cage them will also spend their days trying to escape, which is very frustrating for them and they will soon become sick.
A big laboratory cage of a type that is commonly called Makrolon IV (60*40cm) is the minimun cage size, and such a cage or a glass aquarium make good natal rat cages. The laboratory cages are made of extra hardened plastic that they cannot gnaw through...In a big enough cage they do not tend to gnaw on the cage.
I have kept my natal rats in several different types of cages, and the Makrolon IV is one of them. Natal rats will not be happy in a smaller cage, not even for a week or two!
Another problem with cages is that will get out through any kind of bars unless the cage is totally miceproof.
They can climb well and do not really dig so they probably need a high cage with climbing possibilities. Since they can easily escape though small holes they need a cage that will hold mice. I have info from other natal rat breeders that they enjoy living in a high wire cage, that is buildt as a bird cage. If you could find such a cage that is big enough I think it would be ideal for natal rats.
Or you could try a big terrarium that does not let out any mice... if you can find one.
A basic feature with most natal rats is that they are not really afraid of humans, even when they are not tame. So you can easily pet even newly bought natal rats that have never been tamed. But only as long as you keep them in their cage and do not lift them... Then they start jumping away. If you try to hold on to a natal rat that is not tame it might bite you! But as long as you just let it stay in the cage and pet it and gently stroke its fur it will very soon lie down with a contended face. I think it is magic! They are not afraid of gentle dogs either :-)
Natal Rats are supposed to have very low aggression towards eachother so males can easily be introduced to eachother without any fighting. But from my own experience this is not always true... One of my natal rats was known for not being able to accept any other natal rats unless they were little babies, about 5 weeks old. He actually bit if they were older! All the others, though, have had no such problems, so maybe he was not normal. My first male natal rat Bonzo accepted all new males into his group without problems. What he did was chasing them around the cage at night, it looked a bit like if he was trying to mate with them:-)
After I wrote the above I learned that many natal rats really do have that low aggression towards eachother, so I did take out all natal rats that have ever bitten another natal rat out from my breding groups. I had one male and one female that bit other natal rats (Donny & Dora). Also some of their children have done the same.
But it is really sad to see a natal rat that bites. The one that gets bitten gets really stressed and sits in a corner of the cage and squeks. If I remove the offender and only leaves the nice ones it takes about 12 hours until all is well in the cage, but the one I took out is suffering. Natal rats suffer if kept alone. So sadly I have felt the need to put the ones that bites down. Only a few of mine has done this so far. The rest lived in big groups, sleeped in a big heaps and they always looked like they loved eachother.
I did try to give my natal males (Bonzo and his gang) a bowl with fine bird sand. They used this bowl as a toilet! I soon learned that they are extremely easy to potty train this way!
In the wild they live in open terrain in the south half of Africa. There they are natural pests, just like our house mice and brown rats. They eat crops, seeds and insects. Coconuts are a favourite! When there is lots of food they eat a lot of vegetables. When food is scarse they can eat eachother. The natal rat (Praomys natalensis) is the most common rat in Africa. So you can image them doing a lot of damage and making people angry...
They actually enter houses where people live, and may, just like our rats and mice, live in the walls or under the floors or in the roof.
All species of Praomys have large litters of young. This of course includes the natal rat. 12 babies in each litter is rather common, the biggest litter I have heard of so far was 22 babies in one litter. They start breeding early, at the age of 2 months, and pregnancy lasts about 3 weeks. My youngest female to get pregnant was only 7 weeks old when she got pregnant. I actually had left her with her father since it says everywhere in the litterature that they can't get pregnant until the age of 3 months... NOT TRUE!
The photo shows my female Dora on the 18th of July 2002, 2 days before she had her second litter of babies.
All my natal babies have looked healthiest and grown best when given lots of millet. I have left my natal rat babies with their mother until they are at least 6 weeks old. As long as the father is not present (and no other natal male that is older than the litter) the young females will generally not get pregnant before the age of 2 months. This is because it is a common rodent trait that the female babies mature faster than their brothers, so even if a few of the females sexually mature earlier than 2 months of age, the brother will will most probably not. It is noteworthy that these ages will drop throught time, as the species is domesticated.
The photo shows Dora's second litter at the age of 5 days.
A very intriguing feature with this animal is that they continue growing for so long! A natal rat male will probably not have stopped growing at the age of 1 year, they can still grow considerably in length (the skeleton is still growing) at this time of life. Common pet rats (Rattus norvegicus) and mice are more or less fully grown at this age. The common rat male do still grow in length up until the age of 16 to 18 months, but the growth that still occurs in that species after the age of 1 year is minimal even though it exists. The male natal rat can grow noticeably in length after the age of 1 year. This odd fact is the reason that in the days when our natal rats only came in one colour we could still have a group of natal rats that was easily distinguable from eachother because of the longtime difference in size.
The photo shows Dora and her second litter, still suckling at the age of 20 days.
If you plan to breed natal rats I can recommend buying a whole lot of millet for the babies, you can buy it on stems in the pet shop. Buy a big bag!
Copyright Eva Johansson.
Last update: 13th of April 2007.