Posted by:
IkeLightner
at Wed Sep 15 15:26:36 2010 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by IkeLightner ]
Hey guys, sorry for the long post.....
But to make an additional comment(s) on the subject of feeding gravid females...and just as a disclaimer, to date I have only ever had 1 gravid female BRB but this was what happened in my experience.
I fed my female normally on about a 12-14 day schedule of lrg adult rats from the time I strated cooling in Mid October through the time I introduced my male in December and I kept up with this until around March.
In March, I recorded what I initially thought was her POS (althought I eventually realized this wasn't her atual POS). At this point I cut her off on the food for the next 1.5 months and when she shed again on 5/4/2010 (her legit POS date) I began offering her food about once every month.
I scaled back the size of my food offerings in case there were any developing young and thus either offered her extra large mice or day old chicks both f/t from there on. One thing that I noticed and took as a good sign was that she would not constrict or even hardly lunge at these food items but when I sat them close to her for a few moments she would just slowly open her mouth and begin swallowing the food item.
I continued this routine and she ate one meal towards the end of May, June, and July. At this point she looked ready to burst and had spent nearly all of the past 3 months of her time on the heat 24-7. I temp gunned her nearly every time I checked on her and she always ranged in temp from 81-85 in her swollen section (most often right at 82.5 degrees).
At this point I held off on offering her any more food until the babies were born and that happened on 8/23/10 which put her at 111 days POS and right in line with Daves 117+/- a week.
Oh yeah, and she delivered 25 healthy babies and is doing great with a good body size and weight currently not even 1 month out from delivering her litter.
I guess really all I'm saying is that I feel like offering her food during her pregnancy helped to keep her in good shape and it didn't seem to cause any ill effects for the developing young. I think that producing such a large litter while being fed on this schedule is decent evidence that will make me worry less about this feeding protocol in the future. I hope any of this made sense to atleast someone, ha sorry for such a long rambling.
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Ike Lightner
2.3 BRB (Dugo, Sultan, Roxy, Brazita, & Lucille)
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RE: From Breeders Experience - IkeLightner, Wed Sep 15 15:26:36 2010