I have a small colony of rats, about 6.30 breeders and multiple babies or various sizes. Before this problem I maintained anywhere from 150-200 rats. Recently I pulled all my old breeders, as I do every 6 monts, and replaced them with new breeder stock from my own holdbacks. I started this colony about three years ago with 5 rats and have kept it going since without introducing any new blood lines or parasites. before I changed out the old breeders i noticed that the pups were dieing at about 3 weeks of age. I didn't pay too much attention at first because I was feeding off the pinkies to all the baby snakes i hatched. I thought at first that the females were just old and weren't taking care of the pups, as they normaly do. Now that I have all new breeders they are beginning to reproduce rapidly with each new female having 15-20 in a litter. They too at 3, or so, weeks are misteriously dieing. Every day I pull one or two dead baies from each box. I have not changed their food, and I use pine from the local TSC. I have never had this problem, usually i have more rats than I know what to do with. Do I need to risk my entire parasite free colony and introduce new blood? Any one have any ideas or seen this before? I have one litters with 3 pups that are fat and opening their eyes and look good, that is bout 3 out of 100 that have lived in the past month.

picture 1- litter about 2 weeks old, 2 dead pups
picture 2- litter ond day old look healthy mom is taking good care of them
picture 3- this is what is left of a 4 week old litter of about 15.

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