Remove Cage Shelves & Ramps!
- Moomoo Rattery
- Mar 8, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 2
Many cages come with plastic or wooden shelves and ladders, but they don’t add much for the rats beyond looking tidy to us. Rats don’t need ladders. They’re great climbers and benefit more from having branches, ropes, and perches to move around. This reflects their natural habitats and behaviors!
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The Problems
1) Health:
Plastic shelves mostly just become pee spots, which makes the cage smell worse and increases the risk of infection if rats walk through it with small cuts or scratches. Their urine also breaks down to produce ammonia, which can cause respiratory infections.
2) Cleaning:
Leaving shelves and ramps increases the frequency and amount of work you needed to clean. If you chose to keep the shelves and ramps until you get more enriching climbing devices, remember that they need to be wiped daily with vinegar water. If covered in fleece, they need to be washed with unscented detergent and vinegar every 1-3 days.
Replacing these items with branches, ropes, and ledges reduces cleaning because they're difficult spots for your rats to rest on, so they have less of a chance of urinating or defecating on these items. Branches, shelves, and ropes can be cleaned every week, or sometimes longer depending on use.
3) Unnatural movement
Ramps and hammocks are not natural for rats, and can promote obesity. When ramps with steps on them aren't covered with fleece or cardboard, they can get sprained ankles on the rungs. Rats in the wild are jumping, digging, traveling through tunnels, and climbing jagged uneven surfaces like rocks and tree stumps.
Solutions
Instead of shelves, a litter tray with absorbent bedding works much better for cleanliness and litter training. You can attach litter trays to any point on the cage, it doesn’t have to be on a flat surface. Many litter trays have the option to be fixed on the cage and can be “floating”. Another great option if you want to keep a shelf is to measure the dimensions of the shelf and find a plastic bin or cat litter box that will fit, and filling the bin with a few inches of substrate for a “dig box”
I recommend removing: shelves that have free space on them and aren’t holding a litter or dig box as mentioned above, large platforms, main dividing level in a Critter Nation if you’re using it for one group, and ladders. These all limit your ability to create an active cage layout and can promote boredom and obesity.
Replace these items with a mix of branches, ropes, wooden toys, and other enrichment items. We hand-make natural climbing ropes and hammocks to fill your cage! Remember not to use too many hammocks to promote exercise, just 1 per rat is sufficient.
Products:
Baskets from dollar tree zip tied to cage
IKEA scarf hangers
Branches from safe trees foraged & cleaned
Benefits of Replacing These Items
An active cage setup encourages natural behaviors like climbing, jumping, stretching, running, digging, foraging, hiding, nesting, balancing, and chewing. Remember rats prefer clutter, fill every open space with items. Lava ledges and wooden ledges made for chinchillas (check the type of wood if it’s safe first) are helpful to aid rats in moving between items and promote exercise. Without all those shelves and ramps you will now have space for a 14-18 inch wheel (14+ for females, 16+ for males) which will also promote long term health.
Common Mistakes
1) Too many hammocks.
While hammocks are great, overloading the cage with them can make rats lazy and contribute to odor buildup.
2) Too much fleece.
A good cage layout doesn’t need to be expensive or perfectly color-coordinated. While pretty, fleece does not offer any ammonia control. When it is not washed properly or often enough, it can hold onto ammonia and trigger a respiratory infections. Remember that hammocks should be washed every 1-3 days.
Fleece does not allow rats to fulfill their need to dig and burrow as they do in the wild. Utilize ammonia controlling bedding such as aspen, kiln-dried pine, or hemp. Use a large pan and a deep substrate at least 2 inches, while limiting fleece.
3) Too much open space
If your rats are old, it’s common for them to become clumsy and you’ll feel inclined to add the shelves and ramps back. But having an active layout actually keeps rats more active for longer and delays things like hind leg degeneration (HLD). If you are concerned that your rat might fall, then add a few extra fall breakers into the cage e.g., scarf hangers, long wood bridges, long hammocks, or look up rat cage fall breakers on Etsy.
Products:
Conclusion
If you enjoy decorating your cage, go for it! Just prioritize your rats’ needs over aesthetics. They prefer a busier, more cluttered setup than what looks neat to us. Their health will improve long-term, their enrichment needs will be satisfied, and you will be less likely to visit the vet for abscesses or respiratory infections.
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