is it safe to henna my rat?

[newbieratter]

Hello

My stepdaughter got her first lot of fancy rats this summer and two of them are pretty damned near identical.

They are both cinnamons and we just can't tell them apart.

We really want them to learn their own names so we can bond with them and teach them tricks and play games.

But we can never tell them apart enough to be consistent about using their names!

We're thinking of getting a bit of henna and marking the fur of one of them so that we can tell them apart.

As far as I can tell from looking on the web, henna is not a skin or eye irritant and is only harmful if ingested in fairly significant amounts.

Do you think it would be safe to use henna on one of these rats?

[Australian Rat Forum]

Hi and welcome to the forum

I dont know about henna but my sister who is a breeder, uses Food Colouring when she wants to tell identical rats apart.

She will put some in their coats, but she has to keep doing it as the rats clean each other and themselves and some how get whatever she uses off within a few days, which is why she started using food colouring because it isnt bad for rats to eat it.

[newbieratter]

Thanks, Nathan.

We hadn't even thought of food colouring.

I imagine henna would last a bit longer than a few days but we might play it safe and use what a breeder uses.

[gardenangel]

Hi Nathan,
Do they get colored tongues when they lick the coloring of each other?
Silly question I know, but I just had this image in my head as I was reading it. lol lol lol

[Australian Rat Forum]

;D hahahahahaha

Never thought about it that way, but thanks, now I have this image of rats with blue, purple, green, orange tongues.

[ashana]

Hmmm, multi-coloured rats with multi-coloured tongues, could be a problem of they clean each other as the colours would mix and they would all be the same colours LOL

[littleraton]

haha, what a strange thought!

I don't know about henna though, when I read that topic subject initially I thought you must be crazy - that is I was imagining tatoos, etc. Silly of me I know!

Henna... hmm, food colouring sounds safer, but it's not so permanent is it... Maybe you could get them to wear different coloured jackets.... hehe just kidding, I'm not sure what to do, but I have thought about how tricky it must be with identical rats! Food colouring sounds good I think...

little raton

[fizzlesticks]

Ahh, food colouring. Would be be ridiculous of me to dye a rat pink...to match my own rat-tail? (I have short hair, and a long piece behind my left ear.)

Yes, it would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?

[christie]

I have seen lots of people use food colouring on there animals. I don't think it would hurt them, but i wouldn't be doing it too often.
Someone once told me as well that if you added food colouring to an animals water, in small amounts every day that eventually it would change there fur colour. Anyone know if its actually true? I'm not planning on doing it i was just curious.

[fizzlesticks]

Well, Christie, it works with...celery and some flowers. I can remember doing little 'show and tell' experiments in primary school. I don't know about animals, though. If humans eat too many carrots, we turn orange; I don't know about food colouring and rats. Alas, I doubt it'd work, especially without making them ill.

[fireyvixxen]

No, feeding food colouring to animals would not change their colour. Feeding certain chemicals MAY, but it would also affect their health. For example, people who live on an extremely high diet of carrots gain an excess of Beta-carrotine, which turns their skin yellow/orange. these people usally die shortly afterwards from beta carrotine poisoning.
Stick to external synthetics or take up genetic manipulation as a hobby. After all, they have glow in the dark mice...
FV

[ceara]

Hmm...
I'd be a little hesitant to use henna. I'm a big fan of henna and use it on my own hair, however there has been some suggestion that henna in large quantities is associated with cancer in mice (I think, it may have been rats). It's probably fine to use temporarily, but for the colour to hold, you need to keep it on for a long time and I would have concerns that they may lick it off before the colour holds! I think the suggestion of food colouring is a lot better

[Colleen]

I was possibly going to adopt two PEW male rats, and they were identical, apart from a very subtle size difference.
I had seriously considered putting a spot of food colour on one of there backs so i could quickly distinguish them.

[barrya]

I use food colouring on babies that a new owner has picked out and wants to be sure that they are receiving the right young when they are ready to take possession of the new baby . I do not let my ratties go until they are 6 weeks old but many people pick out their baby at 3-4 weeks of age and then wait for it to become available.
Never had a problem with the food colouring , i only use blue or green as i do not want a hypo rat from red food colouring .
Barry and Julie

[lillian]

lol.....rats are hyper enough without red food colouring :-)

Food colouring sounds like a good way to tell them apart though. I have two sisters who are so alike and the only way to tell them apart is to look at their tails...Tipsy has a white tip on hers and Isobel doesn't ;-) Would be lost otherwise trying to work out who was who.

I just read in a magazine though that parents of quads had their toes tattooed so they could tell them apart as babies!!!!! A little extreme I think :s

Lil.xx