Reptile & Amphibian Forums

So hamsters sound like they are too much trouble....
What if I breed rats like crazy through winter and spring.How many potential litters could I produce in 5-6 months with 3 females and one male?
I just scored two healthy females free from petco today.One is a beautiful blue color, and both about 5/6 mnths old.Someone brought them in so they were adopting them out for free.
My attic stays around 50 in winter but soars to 100 in summer so all rats would have to be put down by around June.Then i could start again in fall.
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At that age you may or may not find they are still fertile even. My experience is that you may, if they take at all, get a couple litters from them and that may be it. IF they do take and do well and stay fertile, you could get a couple three litters each in that time.
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Sonya

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

Is that what your saying? My other female is almost a year and she is still very fertile.
Im just guessing at the age but they havent reached adult size yet, in fact the one blue one I was wondering if she might be too young yet to get prego.
I do have the cages covered and have cracker and cereal boxes in them as well as stripped up newspaper for warmth.I can always add a under cage heat pad if necessary.
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>>Is that what your saying? My other female is almost a year and she is still very fertile.
>>Im just guessing at the age but they havent reached adult size yet, in fact the one blue one I was wondering if she might be too young yet to get prego.
>>I do have the cages covered and have cracker and cereal boxes in them as well as stripped up newspaper for warmth.I can always add a under cage heat pad if necessary.
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Yes, that is what I am saying. If she isn't adult size she isn't 5 months would be my guess. At 12 weeks a rat is a large medium or a small large by most pet store definitions. Again, depending on your genetics. Mine are larges easily by 4 months and jumbos if they are males.

Have you been breeding that one year old all along? How many litters has she had? or at least a few times previous to her hitting 6 months? If so then she may remain fertile longer. But if you take a 5 month old that has never bred and try to breed her your success will be less than if you start with a 3 month old. If you think she is too young to breed she is probably not. Honestly, a small rat....one that is maybe 100 grams may be too young but any bigger and she is fine. If left with a breeding male you can get an 8 wk old to conceive. She may stunt her growth and be less than stellar at lactating (using energy for other things...like growth) but she can have a litter.

Add to all this that you are gonna take a couple of rats out of heated housing and put them under stress of breeding and cold.......I am a negativist but would not count on much from them. AGAIN, depending on the housing, the food and all those other factors. I picture an attic in upstate NY and you would just have ratcicles.
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Sonya

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

I rechecked the date on my older female and she was born in April of this year so she is only 8mnths, she is currently prego and has had 3 previous litters.I am told she is small for her age though.My male is huge and he is only 4mnths old and has fathered two of those litters.
Im going to put him in with the two younger ones on the first, I want to give them a week to adjust.
My attic is not a dinghy gross one.Its partially finished, was going to be our bedroom but my hubby had a heart attack and it never got done.So now its just a huge empty room.But it never gets below 50 degrees.I think today I might see if I can somehow attach a bin to the cages with a tube and keep a heat pad under half the bin so they have a warm place to have the litters..
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I don't know what minimum temp is necessary for wintertime breeding, but I suspect 50 will be ok if they have some sort of box where they can get out of the cold and huddle together for warmth.
I figure 10 per litter because we know one is getting older, I figure 3 or 4 litters each out of 3 females.
3 litters x 3 rats x 10 babies= 90
4 litters x 3 rats x 10 babies= 120
Of course it depends if they have an early start, they don't mind the cold, etc.
If they're pregnant now, and you continous breed them, you may get 6 litters out of them before it gets too hot.
If you get lucky you may find that 12 per litter is average, depending on the genetics.
Therefore,
5 litters x 3 rats x 12 babies= 180
6 litters x 3 rats x 12 babies= 216
OK, somewhere between 100 and 200 babies.
How many rats do you project you'll need for the next season, and remembering that snakes grow, what size should they be?

You do know that by using petco adoption rats as feeders is going against the agreement that you signed when you adopted them, right?
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~Sara~
"If you look down on me, I am evil, If you look up to me, I am God, if you look straight at me, I Am you"
-Charles Manson

they are breeders.And my breeders are treated well, Better then any in those petstores.
BTW are they going to send the cops out to enforce those adoption forms(bring it on)? Petco does sell thier live rats as feeders themselves wouldnt that be rather hypocritical?
I was complaining that the rats were halfwild and hadnt been handled and she said they were mostly sold as feeders anyway.So she then offered me the ones brought in by a customer because they were a little more friendly.
I wanted ones I could handle without fear of getting bit(been there done that).
Anyway I never bothered to read the adoption form anyway so up till now didnt even know, thank you very much......,
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Boy, you sure are touchy.
You said you were going to kill them off once you were done breeding them, and I assure you that it is against the adoption agreement.
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~Sara~
"If you look down on me, I am evil, If you look up to me, I am God, if you look straight at me, I Am you"
-Charles Manson

oh well..
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>>You do know that by using petco adoption rats as feeders is going against the agreement that you signed when you adopted them, right?
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>>~Sara~
>>"If you look down on me, I am evil, If you look up to me, I am God, if you look straight at me, I Am you"
>>-Charles Manson

I have purchased rats from Petco (only hugely pregnant moms or moms with pups that they got given) in the past and told them exactly what I would do with them. They sell them to me anyway. I didn't sign any agreement and I am thinking any judge in the land would laugh at any sort of legality of it. Theoretically there are laws regarding abuse and neglect.....working with pets for the last 20yrs I can assure you that some folks suck at it....and are not held accountable. Feeders are treated better than many folks pets.
And I gotta kinda wonder about the hypocrasy.....for you to worry about a rat adoption agreement and have a Charles Manson quote for a signature. Thinkin' you didn't live long enough ago to see the horrors that man helped with.
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Sonya

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

You're thinking of two different things. You PURCHASED, which they don't have any agreement against using them as feeders for, but when you adopt from the backroom, they require you to sign an agreement in order to adopt them. If you're so cheap that you can't afford to BUY your feeder animals and instead are going to be deceitful and "adopt" them to get them for free, then you shouldn't even have snakes. Those rats are pets that have been brought back in by people who can't care for them, and the people have been assured that the animals will not be sold or given as feeders. They're pets, and there are a lot of people who wait for petco stores to have friendly rats for adoption as PETS. Instead of allowing these rats that have been loved and hand tamed to find loving homes, you snatch them up because you don't want to be bitten while you overbreed them and sequentially kill them.

I breed both pet rats and feeders, and after spending money to place an ad in my local paper and advertising my pet, hand-tamed babies, and putting clearly in my ad "pets, not feeders or breeders", I STILL had people trying to decieve me in order to get free reptile food. I had people who called me asking where I was located, because they wanted pets, and then when they found that I was too far from them, they admitted that they just wanted free feeders any way. I had someone bring their little girl to pick out "pets", and then I overheard the little girl say "I don't want to feed these to the snakes, they're cute".
I think people who do such things give reptile owners a bad name.

That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.
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~Sara~
"If you look down on me, I am evil, If you look up to me, I am God, if you look straight at me, I Am you"
-Charles Manson

obviously didnt give a "rats azz" about the babies or they would have taken the time to find a home for them rather then handing them over to a petstore.Anyway I dont really care about your opinion.Your obviously a much better person then me....
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It's a bit odd to post in a discussion forum if you don't care about another person's opinion.

But hey, more power to you.
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~Sara~
"If you look down on me, I am evil, If you look up to me, I am God, if you look straight at me, I Am you"
-Charles Manson

If you're so cheap that you can't afford to BUY your feeder animals and instead are going to be deceitful and "adopt" them to get them for free, then you shouldn't even have snakes. Those rats are pets that have been brought back in by people who can't care for them, and the people have been assured that the animals will not be sold or given as feeders. They're pets, and there are a lot of people who wait for petco stores to have friendly rats for adoption as PETS.

RIGHT!
How silly of me for this misunderstanding.
After 20yrs in the pet shop trade I KNOW why there are 'adoptions' of free animals....because people don' t care and just want to get rid of the animal as rapidly and guilt free as possible. They are DUMPING THEM! and as for someone looking to adopt loving pets that is sheer BS. Here people pay money for small, handleable rat babies to get loving pets. They don't want 2yr old nasty, biting, half starved rats that have lived in a parakeet cage and forgotten about. The folks around here come from an hour or two away (couple ladies this month came from 2plus hours on a friend's recommend) to get my 'feeders'. Because I am a silly hypocrite and actually sell rats for either and all of them are handleable and gentle.....except those left on the front stoop in a bucket by someone who couldn't sex them and separate them, or feed them as they weigh half what they should. Yup, I want Petco rejects.
And actually I know a couple kids that work at the local Petco and gee.....they have a couple pythons that eat well. Hmmmm.
Though I did 'adopt' a nice female Blood Python that had outgrown their enclosures.
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Sonya

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