>>Alright, after three months and no babies with mice, I want to start breeding rats. Here's my setup,

>>>10 gallon aquarium, pine shavings, water bottle, rodent chow/dog food mixture. I plan on only having a male and female in there, and they will be multi colored because that's all that the pet stores have.

>> Here's my questions:

>>>I want to save up pinks for a 10 lot of baby ball pythons I want to buy, as well as produce enough to feed my 2 foot ball. How many pinks can I expect in a litter, and how many (if any) should I freeze off, or does it matter.

>>>How often will they produce a litter?

>>>What do you think about my setup, is it too small? I could possibly use a big rabbit cage, but I can't fit that inside, so it'd have to stay in the basement or my horse stable. If I used it I'd have two females and a male.

>>

>> Sorry for all the questions and thanks a lot for replying,

>> Taylor





A ten gallon is too small for one rat, let alone a pair with a litter. Go with a cheaper but bigger tub and drill holes in it.Or the cage, provided the wire spacing will contain them. Keep them in the same temp range as mice and away from wild counterparts or you will have parasite and disease probs. Pine shavings in a low air flow enclosure is going to probably give you uri probs with rats. Try rabbit pellets for bedding. Almost all the stats for rats are the same as mice...except personality and socialability....ie males don't kill each other with rats. 5-20 in a litter, I usually leave 8-12 to raise, but I only raise them to 50grams each and then in the freezer they go. Gestation is three weeks.
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Sonya

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