Nowadays vets are trained to treat a lot more species than cats or dogs . Vets have continuing education in their career for year after year. Many of these classes deal with the “exotic” pets, which can include rodents as well as birds and herps.

I advise you to find your vet before an emergency arises, maybe even before you bring your pet home! This is an area it really pays to be prepared in.

It’s always good practice to have a new pet examined just to make sure there are no health issues in the beginning.

Did you know that canaries have been bred to be pets for about 500 years? Their gift (Or possibly their curse) is the lovely territorial song of the male.

The original wild canaries were from the Canary Islands and were a drab green color. But with all the human breeding interference canaries now come in a rainbow of colors, from bright yellow to pink. Some of these don’t have nearly as pretty a voice as the original green ones, though. That’s because they’ve been bred solely for their appearance and not their song.

One of my favorite canaries is the Gloster canary; with a “hairdo” that reminds me of the early Beatles!

You can teach your kids a lot about animals by allowing them to keep animals overnight, like insects or tide pool dwellers.

When I was a child I collected frog eggs in the spring and watched them hatch and eventually turn into miniature frogs. I let them go then, but I learned more about nature from that experience than any amount of book learning about the changes from tadpole to adult frog.

Depending on where you live, you can learn about the animals in your vicinity then make a little “vacation home” for them. There’s no better way for a child to learn about nature than up close and personal!

For those who believe that rats are beautiful , it naturally follows you might want to breed a pair.

They can mate at 3 months old, and the pregnancy only lasts about 3 weeks. When her time to give birth draws near, mom will build a really special nest. Be sure she has a lot of good materials to create it from.

The birthing process takes about an hour, and usually happens in the very wee hours of the morning. If you’re planning to witness this event, you may have to spend some sleepless nights waiting!

Most mama rates are good mothers, removing the amniotic sack, biting the umbilical cord and licking her babies clean. It’s hard to believe, but by the next evening she’s ready to mate again.

The first rats domesticated were the Norway albino rats. They were bred for laboratory experimentation and through succeeding generations they became smaller and gentler.

But now laboratory rats come in a variety of colors. You can find black rats, cream colored rats and rats that come in a mixture of black and white. Maybe there are some other colors as well, but these are the most common.

Rats need to be housed in large cages. If you put one in a cage designed for a mouse, it’ll suffer for sure. But let that rat out to roam around the room for a few hours every day. Do keep an eye on her, though. Rats are born chewers. In fact, wild rats can even chew through concrete!

And another thing, be sure you feed your rat a nice mixture of healthy foods. Your veterinarian can recommend the best diet for a healthy rat.

Rats make great pets. Not only are they friendly (especially if you’ve been handling them on a daily basis) but they are clean and even affectionate.

Rats have a completely different personality than the mouse. They are not fearful like mice and many people feel they are much smarter than their smaller cousins. Female rats tend to be more interesting than the males. While the guys like to laze around, the pretty lady rats are definitely interested in their surroundings.

And rats like to bath! If you put it in the bathtub it’ll swim. This must be something they are born with as an ability because I’ve never heard of swimming lessons for rats.

All told, rats are fascinating pets, definitely worth looking into!

Reptiles that are herbivorous need to be fed on a daily basis. A reptile that looks healthy won’t have a thin appearance and the legs will be nicely filled out. If you have to miss one or even two days of feeding, it won’t cause any great harm, but do make sure the food is fresh and remove uneaten pieces that are wilted. The fresher the vegetable matter, the higher in nutrients it will be.

Insect eating reptiles should also be fed daily, but species feeding on rodents spend a lot of time digesting in between meals and the adults only need to eat a rat or mouse every 2 weeks or so. Some will need to eat every 10 days. If you have a pregnant female, she of course will need to be fed more often.

Reptiles can be either vegetarians, carnivores, or omnivores. There are even some that start out eating insects as babies and grow into vegetarians in adulthood. It goes without saying that you must know your new pet’s diet and have it supplied before you bring it home!

Most reptiles kept indoors (except for snakes) must have ultraviolet light to keep them healthy. Without it, their bones and shells don’t develop properly and they are not very long lived.

Another important tip is to make sure you have the proper supplements for your pet. Captive reptiles’ diets are often heavy on the phosphorus and light on the calcium. You can supply this in the form of a mineral supplement added to their food, or by giving them cuttlefish.

Coming from a family that had both cats and dogs as pets at the same time, I find the combination perfectly normal.

Why shouldn’t two non-competing carnivores get along? When you look at nature, oftentimes animals of different types are found feeding or drinking water from the same source. It isn’t that unusual to find a cat and dog that have grown up together cuddling and sometimes grooming each other.

The most likely way to create this happy outcome is by raising the two together as companions from kitten/puppyhood.

Like many things in life, if you expect the best, then it’s likely that’s what you’ll get!

A pet bird is a big responsibility. Fortunately, there are different types and sizes for everyone.

It’s a good idea to study up on the needs of any species you’re considering purchasing before taking things too far. There is much information on the internet and in book stores about all the most popular birds. Since information is so readily available, there’s no excuse for not knowing ahead of time what you’re about to get yourself into!

For instance, any of the macaws are exceptionally beautiful, but they need hours of companionship a day, plus a very large cage and careful care and feeding. A smaller parrot like a cockatiel is often a better choice for a first bird. You can teach cockatiels how to talk, but budgies are even smaller and can have a pretty fair vocabulary as well.

The main thing is like so many other aspects of life, it’s a good idea to start small and work your way up.