Well, one of my females finally had her first litter. YEAH!!! I never realized just how cute they are when they are born. She just had a small litter, I counted 9 the night they were born, could only find 7 the next morning. maybe i counted wrong.

Now I do have a problem that I need your help with. I have my rats in a group of 1.3. They are all housed in a 55 gal tank with a combination of newspaper and aspen bedding for a substrate. Well the problem is that one of my other females is adamantly stealing the new mothers babies. This other rat has never had a litter to my knowledge, but insists that she is a better mother, and will literally take the babies right off the mothers nipples and whisk them away to another corner of the tank. There have been several fights among these two rats over these babies and some of the fights have drawn serious blood. So, what I have done is to seperate the mother and her babies into another smaller tank. Is that the right solution?? How hard will it be to reintroduce her to the main tank after the babies are weaned off? Is the rat thief always going to be a problem in this manner or will she get better once she has a litter of her own??

Thanks for listening, sorry for the long post. I look forward to hearing your ideas on this.

[ Show Entire Thread ]