The girls got a new HUGE exercise running wheel! I have purchased 2 running wheels in the past, one was a 12" plastic one when the rats where young, but once they were a couple of months old I didn't want them to continue using it for fear of hurting their spines. The other was a 16" wooden wheel for the big boys. And now I have just purchased a big metal wheel for the girls. It looks bigger than the boys wooden wheel, but it is 15" with a much deeper wheel than the boys have. All three girls could crowd onto it and run at the same time, but two girls can, and do, fit comfortably side by side to run...as long as they are running the same direction that is, Annie and Sofie tried to run opposite directions when they both first go on it (see the videos below). They quickly figured out that one of them had to compromise if they wanted to go anywhere but it was sure funny watching them try to go opposite directions.
Here are some fun videos from the day we installed the wheel in their cage. Annie figured it out what it was for right away, Sofie gave it a try since Annie was using it. Dorothy didn't try it until that night so I don't have any video of her other than what is on my Rat Cam so I am not able to share it.
Annie Gives the New Wheel a Test-Drive...
Sofie Tries Out the Wheel, Then Sofie & Annie Try Tandem Running...sort of. 🤣🤗🤣
And a quick funny video of Annie's very first meeting with the wheel...
I reviewed this product on Amazon. See my review below. If you have been looking for a Great Exercise Wheel for you Rattos I wholeheartedly recommend this one by YKD and you can get yours on Amazon HERE. (this is my affiliate link, it doesn't cost you any extra to use my link, but if you do then I get a teeny, tiny, rat bite size portion of the purchase. And rest assured that I never promote any product that I don't personally own and Love!)
"This may be marketed to chinchilla owners, but I'm speaking for us Rat Lovers when I say, "You Must buy this for your rats!" It is absolutely perfect for them. The large 15" wheel is the recommended size wheel for female rats and average to small male rats (it's recommended that large males have a 16" wheel), anything smaller can be harmful to their spines. And it is wider than all other wheels I have seen so my girls can even run two (or three) at a time...as long as they all go the same directions. I know that because my two girls did try to each go a different direction but quickly learned they were going no where. LOL
The bearings and mounting hardware are all heavy duty and the wheel is perfectly balanced. The wheel mounts to the wall in your cage. I have a Frisco two-story (exactly like a Critter Nation) and it fit perfectly. It is HUGE, but mounted against the back wall about midway up left plenty of room above and below. My cage has a deep well for foraging so I put up a hammock in front and just below the wheel so they would have a safe place to fall if they jumped out while running. The mounting bracket on the back has long cross bars to disperse the load on the bars so the wheel doesn't' point load just one area, this helps to keep the wheel steady and firmly attached over a larger area. As you can see in my video the wheel spins without wobble. Any movement you see in my video is just me holding the camera while trying to keep one of my girls from sneaking out of her cage while I took the video.
The wheel is SILENT too. All you hear are their tiny feet tapping on the metal wheel, but not the wheel spinning. This is really important to me because their room is directly above ours and we sometimes hear them jumping around at night, but wouldn't be able to sleep with a wheel spinning loudly all night. The metal wheel is easy to wipe down during my daily tidy ups, because we know how the rats tend to dribble here and there. The metal wheel is also not going to get chewed up like plastic or wooden wheels that I have owned.
My girls figured out what this big wheel was for immediately. My oldest girl Annie spent the first 30 minutes after installation just running and running. They the other girls started checking it out too. Now all 3 are having fun on it, and no sounds woke us up during the night. I had to check my rat cam to verify they actually used it during the night, because we heard nothing.
Installation takes two people, one inside the cage and one outside the cage. It was pretty straightforward and was installed in about 10-15 minutes.
I absolutely love the wheel, as much as my girls do, and I will be recommending this wheel to all my rattie friends, I feel this is a 'must-have' item for your rats and worth every single penny!"
