Posted by:
Bolitochrome
at Mon Feb 1 09:46:13 2010 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Bolitochrome ]
For rats, it have heard both: Leave and remove. The primary reasons I have heard for removing them from a colony is to prevent the females from being over-bred because they go through a post-partum estrus right after giving birth when they can become pregnant again. This can be a strain on a female's resource.
However, given that you are most likely breeding these as feeders, and thus the longevity of the females are not necessarily a concern, I would say just leave them in with the other females. If you are feeding off some of the pinkies, pups, and crawlers, this means the females will never have a truly huge litter to care for and their resources won't be drained as quickly. Again, make sure the breeding females have adequate nutrition to prevent undersized litters and culling of the litters by the mother.
For the mice and ASFs I breed I tend to cull litters down to about 5-8 young so I will have a stash of frozen "snacks" for my smaller snakes and the remaining young tend to grow faster and ultimately get larger. I do not remove my females from the males unless there are extenuating circumstances.
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Lincoln, NE
0.1 Pastel, 1.0 Pastel het Pied, 0.1 Pied, 0.1 Cinn, 1.0 Black Pewter, 1.0 Woma (hidden gene?), 0.1 Yellowbelly
2.0 Normals, 1.0 Thayeri, 0.1 Thayeri X Alterna, 0.1 crazy cat, 1.0 husband
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RE: EASY QUESTION - Bolitochrome, Mon Feb 1 09:46:13 2010