Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was just wondering if all you guys remove prego females? I just built a new rat rack that holds 1.5 and I was planning on leaving them together to raise the young. Do you think this will be a problem? I have a few empty tubs that I could put the pregos in, but not individually. Will the female with older pups kill the pups from other litters?
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John Vandegrift

In my experience removing the prego females isn't needed. I run my rat bins at ratio's of 1:3 and have a very good survival rate of pups. On average I would say I loose 1-3 pups per litter with litters averaging 9-10. Granted I have 15 bins of breeders and am only feeding 45ish ball pythons so I have a surplus of rats weekly that I have trouble getting rid of as I really have no need to freeze the excess. At the moment I have over 200 feeders pulled and probably 8 bins that need to have a litter or 2 pulled so even if I were to get a spike in mortality of the pups I would still be producing way more than I need. Removing the prego females would be usefull if you have a large colony of rats feeding a large collection of herps and you needed near 100% survival of the pups and you could also monitor which female rats were giving you the largest litters and were the best mothers. The down side of that is the space required to have a couple more racks which many of us small hobbyist/breeders don't have. Hope this helps
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Josh Hutto
JKReptiles

2.3 het pied (RDR, alan bosch x 2, BHB x 2)
1.0 Spider Ball python (Ballroom pythons south)
0.1 High Contrast Albino (Gulf Coast)
1.1 het albino (ben siegel, Gulf Coast)
1.2 het citrus ghost(Gulf Coast line)
1.0 citrus ghost (Gulf Coast line)
1.1 graz pastel female
1.6 05 normal bp's
0.6 04 normal bp's
2.5 adult normal bp's (some need breeding to see if norm)
4 various corns
0.1 brazilian rainbow boa (alan bosch)
1.0 american pit bull terrior
1.1 taco dogs (ankle biters)
1.0 grey cat
0.1 bearded dragons

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrior as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

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Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

n/p
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Ron Billingsley
www.ronbillingsleyreptiles.com

Do you leave them together even with multiple litters in the same tub? If one litter is about 2 weeks old and the other is newborn? Any problems with the newborns getting enough milk?
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John Vandegrift

Rats are not like mice...they rarely kill their young and I have quite a few large breeder males that are very good fathers. I did remove the pregnant mothers a few times when I first started but it seemed as though there were more problems than leaving them together. The mothers do "community feeding" meaning that any mother will feed any baby that is hungry. Rats are very social and I think it is actually better to leave the fathers in with the babies. Mice are a different story though...