Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've read somewhere that African Soft furred rats will sometimes take care of other's young and I wanted to test that theory out. When I went to clean the cage of a mother Natal rat [aka African soft furred rat] I took the mom from her babies and put the babies in a different container. Since the babies were fuzzies I added one fuzzy mouse with the rat's babies.
I set up the cage, added the babies then added the mom. This morning i went to check up on 'em and the fuzzy mouse it still alive and was actually nursing from the mom. Has anyone tried this before?
I'll keep updating as stuff happens.

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1.0.0 Bearded Dragon (Rex- "normal" orange fire)
1.0.0 Bearded Dragon (Glutany- German Giant Mix)
0.1.0 Okeetee Corn (Okatee)
1.1.0 Spotted Python (Hotdog and Shoelace)

ive tried it with regular mice and i do it with rats all the time, as long as you mix the scent of the mothers bedding in with the new baby and then reintroduce it should work everytime, thats how i managed to pull it off.
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1.4 various boas(Flicka,Felony,Nova,Alias,Abby)
0.1 BRB Abalone; ABBI
1.0 Rott X (OSO)
2.0 cats (Simba, Morris)

fish & feeders

U haven't tried it with natal rats, but I have fostered mouse pinks with a rat mother that had a new litter of rat pinks. She fed them easily. I only did it for a couple days as the mouse mother started nursing her own litter finally.

I also put a hairless rat pup from the feeder breeder in with my own rat's litter and she took it in as well. The hairless guy is almost adult sized now and grew up with the rest of the litter and is completely socialized.

>>I've read somewhere that African Soft furred rats will sometimes take care of other's young and I wanted to test that theory out. When I went to clean the cage of a mother Natal rat [aka African soft furred rat] I took the mom from her babies and put the babies in a different container. Since the babies were fuzzies I added one fuzzy mouse with the rat's babies.
>>I set up the cage, added the babies then added the mom. This morning i went to check up on 'em and the fuzzy mouse it still alive and was actually nursing from the mom. Has anyone tried this before?
>>I'll keep updating as stuff happens.

Sometimes it works and sometimes not. I had a vole raised by domestic mice all the way til adulthood and release and he was 3 times bigger than the mice. I have also had moms do fine for a while and then the honeymoon is over and the intruder disappears. If it is the same species...ie mice and mice and rats and rats....cool. But otherwise you never know.
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Sonya

I'm not mean. You're just a sissy.
Happy Bunny