Hi,
OK, the whole thing is a wash down system. The actual cage itself is made from plastic coated wire shelving. It is 6 feet long x 20 inches tall x 24 inches deep. The cage is suspended over this way too complex contraption I call the "cradle". The cradle is made entirely from PVC plastic so as not to hold odor like wood would (clever play on words !) and has a drain in it leading out the back of the building to an as yet undug drain field (really looking forward to that). I go in every morning with a hose with a srayer attachment and hose/spray it all down the drain and that's it - take about 5 minutes. Actually I do it more often because I just like playing with my new toy ! But it really cuts down on the smell. I'll be runnig about 100 females in there, and they will all be serviced by 8 lucky male rats. So obviously I'm not feeding and cleaning up after a bunch of unneccessary males. The bedding savings alone over a 20 year period can really add up. One male rat can really eat a lot of food. I pull the pregnant females and let them raise up their babies seperatly. Nobody will convince me you don't get a better rat that way. This is a much more efficient way - in my opinion - to do rats as opposed to "harem" style breeding most people do (numerous small colonies). I bought all of these used rat lab boxes for $12 each recently. What a deal - smartest thing I ever did - each box will pay for itself with just one litter of rats - and I'll probably have these things for the rest of my life. She is still selling some on the caging classifieds (Lynn Kubic - nice gal). The whole thing is set up on a gravity fed automatic watering system, which, I wish I had bought the screw in type of nipple so I could run PVC lines in back of the boxes with the nipples coming through grommets. I would have a presure regulater and the whole nine yards that way - a much better system. I stole this idea really from a guy named Tom Weidner who now owns and operates Habitat Systems. I think that about covers it, if I forgot anything let me know. Thanks for letting me ramble !
Paul Edwards
