Thursday night my Red Group female Anika birthed 17 large, healthy babies on day 106 POS. No slugs. A superb litter for the first time Mom. Her post-birthing weight was 8.5 lbs. She began the breeding trial at 10.5 lbs. I raised Anika slowly for 4.5 years before I was satisfied that she was ready for this. She definitely rewarded my patience....the litter is everything I could have hoped for. There appears to be at least 8 Jungles in the litter. I believe these are the first Red Group Jungles but I could be mistaken. See how gorgeous Mom looks moments after delivering babies at 5 years of age. The Jungles are exquisite.....bright, clean, colorful. Check out the sibling comparison photo for those that still don't accept that the Jungle gene is good for much more than altering the pattern. Mom was very neat about it. She left a tidy little pile and she didn't have a drop of birthing fluid on herself. The easist cleanup that I have ever had. I handled her immediately and gave her congratulations in the form of two rats. Very rewarding night and lots of fun. You can see more photos at the link below.
On a related note, I haven't been posting much lately but I did see some controversy about the breeding of an 18 month old female. I'm no expert but I do have concerns. Inexperienced hobbyists will read about this one success and think that it is attainable with any female. What they don't read about are the hundreds of young females that die as a result of impatient keepers who powerfeed their animals. Naturally, success stories are posted but people don't tend to post about the ones that are fertilizing their yard. In my opinion, overfeeding is a plague in this hobby and something we should not be proud of. I should have kept my mouth shut. Well, enjoy some photos:
