Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was wondering if anyone here breeds there own rats. I was thinking about doing it cause of the money I have been spending on my BP and now my monitor is on rats I dont know what I am going to do... Could yall tell me a little bit about breeding them if you do know anything about it...

I have in the past but it ends up a full time job so I gave it up. More economical but to much work. Plus I can only house rats 6 months a year.

I can answer questions, it is easy to have just a few pairs. I had nearly 400 animals.

Good Luck
-----
Jeremy

"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" July 16, 1945 Robert Oppenheimer

1.1 Double Het "Sharp" Snow RTB's
1.1 Hypomelenistic RTB's
0.2 Pastel Hypo RTB's
2.0 Double Het Stripe Albino RTB's
0.1 Suriname RTB
0.1 Anerthrystic RTB
0.0.10 Red Bearded Dragons
1.1 Rhinoceros Iguana's
1.0 Green Iguana
1.0 Ball Python
1.1 Cream Golden Retrieviers
1.0 Pomeriaian
0.2 Catus Terribilis
0.1 Spouse
1.0 Child -coming soon-

I have a pair on my shaded lanai in a 75 gal aquarium. they are one male, one female. she produces a clutch of 7-11 pups every 4 weeks. they've been at it since June. i feed the pups off to my monitors. i don't remove the male or do anything special. watch out for mom. she will walk up to your hand and bite a chunk out of you when she has pups. don't let temps get below 50s or above 90 and you should be ok. it's easy. i've not tried to have a harem of females to one male like you can do with mice. so i can't comment on that.

With mice you almost have to have a harem, because continued pregnancies with no breaks between litters exhausts the female and she'll die. I'm not sure if this is also the case with rats, but it would make sense to me that you'd get better and bigger babies if the female had a month of rest between litters.

The best set up for small scale rat production would probably be a couple of females and one male each with their own cage (just drop the male into the appropriate female's cage for a week when you want her to get preggers), and a big cage/tank for raising up weaned babies if you want older feeders.

Rodents on the whole tolerate cool temperatures better than warm ones, so make sure they stay in a room that'll stay in the seventies and lower, rather than the 80's.

Rats REEK if you don't clean them regularly, so make sure you've got the time/energy to clean several rat cages every week or so.

Hope that helped!
~jenny
-----
1.1.1 normal ball pythons (Cindy, Darwin, and Periscope)
1.0 rex rat (Scurvy)
0.1 bunny (Spazz)
2.1 betta fishes (Vicious, Killer, and Butters)
2.2 great danes (Shasta, Odysseus, Merlot, and Watson)
1.0 fat fuzzy mutt (Smokey)
1.1 cats (Thidwick and Turtle)
2.0 horses (Buddy and Sam)
1.0 goat (Billy Jack)
2.25 chickens (Jacques the rooster and his harem)

but what I really want is more ball pythons!

rats breed in constant temps in the 80s while mice usually will not. not a problem in most of US this time of year either way. my rats bred all summer long and temps were always in 80s day and 70s night.

In the low 80's, it's not really a big deal. 80-82 is tolerable, but anything higher and they just start looking miserable. I live in southern california and during the heat wave this summer, even with the AC lowering the temp inside to 85 (and that was cool compared to how hot it was outside) my rat was still panting.
I'm just saying they'll do better in lower temps, and if there's a reptile room they probably shouldn't be kept in there because ideally the whole room would be about 80 all/most of the time. It's stressful for them to be always warm like that, the same as its stressful on the female to have litter after litter after litter.

~jenny
-----
1.1.1 normal ball pythons (Cindy, Darwin, and Periscope)
1.0 rex rat (Scurvy)
0.1 bunny (Spazz)
2.1 betta fishes (Vicious, Killer, and Butters)
2.2 great danes (Shasta, Odysseus, Merlot, and Watson)
1.0 fat fuzzy mutt (Smokey)
1.1 cats (Thidwick and Turtle)
2.0 horses (Buddy and Sam)
1.0 goat (Billy Jack)
2.25 chickens (Jacques the rooster and his harem)

but what I really want is more ball pythons!