Reptile & Amphibian Forums

With rats due to give birth do you have to put them in separate cages to have their babies???

I have 3 females and 1 male per breeding cage. The only time I remove rats is when the babies are 1 month old. Other adults are fine to keep in the cage. It is best to remove rats as soon as they can be weaned so that they are not drinking all the milk and smothering the newborns. It is hard for the mother to care for the newborns if there are 10-15 weanlings on top of them wanting milk. Usually all the adult rats in a cage will help take care of the babies, mothers will nurse each others babies also

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Shannon in Reno
1.0 savannah monitor (Pombe-means "beer" in Swahili)
2.4 dogs
1.0 cat
5.32 rats
6.44 mice
7.50 chickens
1.2 beardies
0.1 black rat snake
~500 hissers
1 giant millipede
0.1 Chissel tooth kangaroo rat
1.1 rabbits
1.0 wonderful husband

keep them in a breeding group

Advantages:
- higher overall production with less human intervention
- moms can share the raising duties

Disadvantages:
- For smaller colonies, you don't necessarily always have the full variety of sizes including newborn pinkies.

Cycle breed them where you introduce a female to a male for breeding only and move her to a seperate cage for birth/raising litter.

Advantages:
- can fairly closely control the volume from the colony, you determine when a litter gets started.

Disadvantages:
- you need to track individusl females and move them in and out of a males cage.
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count:
24.36 BRB
19.19 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

The small group i have i seperate all my females into their own or paired with another female, all prego at once and then i don't have anything at once either, so i control what i need and when i need it.
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1.4 various boas(Flicka,Felony,Nova,Alias,Alibi)
0.1 BRB Abalone; ABBI
1.0 Rott X (OSO)
2.0 cats (Simba, Morris)
fish & feeders
~:~~~~~~~ ~:~~~~~~~~

Exactly, by introducing the female(s) to the male(s) when you want and removing before they give birth, volumes and litter dates can be fairly well controlled. Right now I am a bit overstocked on larger rats, not a real problem since I'll be needing extra's for my Brazilian Rainbow Boas once they drop their litters. But if I didn't have this upcoming need I could simply figure out how many "extra" I have and reduce the "starts" over the next few weeks to reduce the number of babies being born and eventually (couple of months later) there would be fewer weanlings going into the growout racks to replace those being fed off.

The key point with cycle breeding is long range planning. To get a weanling rat is about 7-8 weeks, another month or two in the growout rack to get a larger feeder. So, you have to start now what you will be feeding off (at larger size) in a few months. At the same time, yoiu are starting now what you will be feeding off at smaller sizes in a shorter time frame.

After doing this for years I came to the realization you need to figure out what size colony will support your needs. All the way from pinkies to adult breeders. Once the colony is large enough, does not matter what size you feed off, only qty, that's how many you need to replace.

For example, my colony is around 400 - 500 rats at the Wednesday cleaning day. Snakes are fed on Monday/Tuesday, so the colony is intentionally depleted right before I clean. Smart huh? Babies are typically born on a weekend 3 1/2 weeks after the Wednesday female to male introduction. So, if on Monday/Tuesday I feed off 60 rats of various sizes (pinky to large adult) I have to start enough litters to replace those 60 consumed rats. I figure on 10 rats per litter. I know litters are usually larger but sometines smaller and sometimes the mom dies or does not produce.
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count:
24.36 BRB
19.19 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

Another reason to cycle breed is to give the mommies a rest occasionally if you don't need full throttle production. That way your moms aren't constantly nursing AND prego and as a result, skinny most of the time.

I highly advocate separate tubs for each female and litter.

But I know of people that keep them together in harems.

For me, the risk of infanticide, stress, and injured pups is too high to put most mothers through that.

Mothers will fight over pups, constantly stealing them from eachother. Or, one mother will refuse to nurse, so the other 2 have more than they were made to deal with. The stress of this situation can lead to mothers actually destroying the litter.

But on the other hand, I have heard about mothers taking the responsibility in hand and sharing the duties. Usually, the two rats have been raised together and are on the same level socially within their rat group. (Meaning no dominants with submissive rats)

Good luck!