Rat breeders assistance please

HisssssyFit · #1 (**permalink**) 02-27-2007, 06:47 PM

I got five rats (four females and a male) for breeding purposes a few months ago and after the initial adjustment period they settled in and gave me eight beautiful lil babies who are growing up very nicely and who shall soon be fed off to my darlings. But okay really, one litter? from four females? The maths is just not adding up really well right now.

They are altogether in a cage that is 3 ft x 3 ft with 3 levels, so there is a lot of space for them.

Is it that they don't want to have any more litters until the first set of babies are grown? Is it that they have a hierachy and only one female is allowed to produce litters. The other females all look pregnant and last night I swear I heard pinkies but when I went to look for them this morning NOTHING. Quite frankly I am disheartened, I would hate to think that they killed off the babies (before I could

h43r: heheh bad joke).

Is it that we should put them in smaller cages separated by females and let the male visit for his very brief courtship (read to the unskilled eyes apparent rape) or will they all one day give me many many litters at once?

Thankies

HisssssyFit · #2 (**permalink**) 02-27-2007, 06:55 PM

noone breeds rats around here? *cries*

John_White · #3 (**permalink**) 02-27-2007, 07:15 PM

The following site has some good information on rat breeding:
Breeding Rats

bleeding_sarcasm · #4 (**permalink**) 02-27-2007, 07:50 PM

if the pups arent weaned yet, then you should seperate out the nursing mom and the pups into a seperate cage. if you heard pinks, then there were pinks and they did eat them. I sometimes have trouble with with groups above 1.2 being kept together all the time, or, if i do have larger groups, as soon as a female becomes VERY pregnant [about to drop] then i put her in her own cage.

If they are getting pregnant, [the male is obviously humping them] and they are eating the pinks, then theyre just not very good mommies, OR, you need to look at what youre feeding them. Some people say you need a high protien diet [dog food, eggs, etc], i, however, do amedium protien diet, with lab rodent diet [which only has like 17%], and occasionally eggs, with lots of fresh veggies. and other table scraps.

tmlowe5704 · #5 (**permalink**) 02-27-2007, 08:02 PM

I have problems with mothers eating litters if I have more than 1.2 in my breeding tubs. Chances are, even though they had 3 levels, they feel overcrowded.

HisssssyFit · #6 (**permalink**) 02-27-2007, 08:04 PM

I'll get the hubby to build me a small cage as a delivery and recovery room, the only other cage I have free right now is a hamster cage which I suppose would be too small for her.

I'm actually beginning to wonder if the females aren't too old, in which case I'll have to keep a couple of the new girls (the one litter that did survive) to carry on the work. They're 3/4 weeks old now and so cute, should have socialised them but didn't want to get too attached.

HisssssyFit · #7 (**permalink**) 02-27-2007, 08:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tmlowe5704

I have problems with mothers eating litters if I have more than 1.2 in my breeding tubs. Chances are, even though they had 3 levels, they feel overcrowded.

That's it the snakes eat well this weekend

nomadbean · #8 (**permalink**) 02-27-2007, 08:15 PM

Our rats ate their young if our room we had them in got to loud and active. They were in the garage so if we built something that weekend there were no babies. They cannot live together like that and breed very successfully. We gave up and just fed the idea of to the snakes. Way too much trouble to ever try again I thought... good luck to you.
Trina

Sleepy_FF · #9 (**permalink**) 02-27-2007, 08:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nomadbean

They cannot live together like that and breed very successfully.

bullcrap.

when i was breeding, i kept 10+ females and 1 male in a fairly large 2 level cage. i gave them an overabundance of vegitarian dog food, as well as fresh veggies, table scraps, and canned dog food.

i would have them all pregnant at the same time. then i would move them 4 mothers to a cage (i had seperate cages, with 2 levels. the mothers live on the top level and take turns nursing)

i had a few smaller cages set aside for some mothers who i knew were AWESOME mothers... id keep them as nursing mothers for the length of 4 litters

Hissy - one say to ensure excellent results is to buy feeding containers that you can attach to the side of the cage, so that they cant knock them down to the bottom floor. buy lots of them,. give them an OVERABUNDANCE of food, like 2-3 times the food normally. its OK to give feeders table scraps too, i call my rats garbage disposals.

another thing is save boxes. cereal boxes, small packaging boxes, etc, as well as paper towel tubes. give those to the rats, they like to play with them. take a box, put treats in it, and close the box up, it gives them something to do - AND it gives them somewhere to hide if they want.

i dont do breeding on that scale anymore, becuase dealing with 8-10 litters of 13+ at one time got a bit old without a rat rack system. once i can build myself one, ill go back to breeding rats for food. right now i do it 1 or 2 rats at a time, so i can have pinks for my smaller snakes

HisssssyFit · #10 (**permalink**) 02-27-2007, 08:43 PM

10 to 1 wow Trace your male must have been exhausted

Thanks for all the advice guys, I'll keep working at this until I get it right.

Sleepy_FF · #11 (**permalink**) 02-27-2007, 08:44 PM

oh, i sure didnt have complaints from him

bleeding_sarcasm · #12 (**permalink**) 02-27-2007, 09:03 PM

hahah, but im sure you will get a complaint from that 8.1 group you had going on. ouch for that girl. hahah.

yea, breeding rats is pretty easy, it just sometimes takes a while to find those right moms. rat moms are awesome when you find the perfect ones, you could even put animals in from other species to nurse from her. David did that with a baby rabbit once, ahhaa.

I am more of the mouse breeder, since i only have 8 snakes. And, i dont think you ever saw my house when i had 12 lab rat tubs full of producing mice... 52 pinks from 3 moms? those were the days... stupidly i had some get out, and then i killed off the rest over the winter, but luckly i gave some of my awesome genetics to one of my friend, who is giving them back! my hypo tricolor colony was 10x better then any swiss websters. It is sometimes a trial and error process for the first few months, raising up new aquisitions, finding a compadible colony, and then, figuring out who the good moms are...

I would be wary of holding back the baby females and breeding them back to their dad. inbreeding does have a habit of producing smaller/weaker litters, instead of out crossing, which will give you a ton of babies that grow really fast. i find babies that are offered alot of greens, grow 2x as fast as ones that arent. i would just get a new male, if thats your plan. Also, if females are too young when they have their first litter, they will usually eat it, that happens with alot of species.

HisssssyFit · #13 (**permalink**) 02-27-2007, 09:12 PM

hmmm seems as if I'll have to give the zoo a call and see if they could spare me another male on top of everything else. Only problem is how do I know this new male won't be a cousin or half brother. I'm not sure what their breeding rooms are like.

HisssssyFit · #14 (**permalink**) 03-02-2007, 03:08 PM

Erm, those babies that I heard on Monday and believed dead are alive and looking well. There are nine of them...I guess I have good mommies after all...please ignore

muzixman · #15 (**permalink**) 03-02-2007, 03:25 PM

Glad to hear they survived.

-=krissi=- · #16 (**permalink**) 03-03-2007, 06:37 AM

That's a pretty nice lil cage ya got there.
I bred rats for about 5 years & I figured I'd jsut add some of my experience to this thread for you. I bred show rats and feeders. I miss it but don't nearly have the time anymore with my baby starting to crawl and get into stuff now lol.

THe best thing you can do is cull the "bad mommies". If you notice a particular female who is a bad mother... make her into a good meal for a hungry herp lol. I used to replace the males every couple of months too.

in a cage like yours I would have had 2 males and 3 or 4 females.
One thing I found that was very helpful was to feed them rat/mouse food instead of the lab blocks. I tested that theory out a few times with different sets of breeders & they always produced more babies on the mixed food instead of the blocks.
Of course, in addition to that make sure they get plenty of fresh fruits & veggies as well as assorted treats. My rats loved chicken wings (we always ate most of the meat before giving them to the rats though. yum yum yuummmmm lol) and a handful of ferret treats to snack on sometimes.
I used to keep their food in heavy ceramic bowls. One by the main hide (where moms & babies were) and one on the complete opposite end of the cage (where non nursing females and the males used to feed for the most part).

One thing that seemed to help was having excercise wheels and toys. Like someone else said... boxes, newspaper and paper towels are all good too AND make for nice nesting material.
As silly as most people would thinnk that sounds, I guess it jsut made for happier rats.
You can secure them to the sides of the wire-walls with those plastic zip-pull thingies (I call 'em riot cuffs lol but I can't think of their actual name) or even twist-ties if you use enough of them.

I don't know if you actually had built another enclosure for them or not but you might want to try something with more floor space. If they have more floor space with still the little bit of height & levels to climb that might all the difference in the world. I know that helped me out a lot with most of my breeders.

I know why my 2 cages taht were similar to yours I had a lot of cleaning to do. You may want to think of handling the rats a little each time you clean or feed them or whatever. It's not fun to reach in to give them food and have a rat or 2 lunge at you because "they're only feeders" & they became vicious hahaha. I have a few scars from my first couple sets of breeders before I started petting them & handling them every once in a while.
Oh, and watch out for nursing females who will sometimes come flying out of nowhere because she thinks you are trying to harm her or babies, when really you are just changing their water lol !!

Hmmm that's about all I can think of but it sounds like you're off to a good start!

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