No kidding, I was hooking up my "gas chamber" to put down all of my ASF rats because they hadn't produced in so long when I heard that tell-tail squeek from one of their nest boxes. I opened it up to find 7 fuzzy little babies. Then, in walks the daughter and the tears start flowing and the "don't kill'em Blue" song and dance....so, now I have 7 new ASF rats..... for now....
The trouble is I can't seem to sex them reliably. Are they that much different from mice and rats? It seems like they all have the "black sack"(this is a family web site).
Thanks,
Blue
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Saved by the squeek!
blueselaphe
Jan 09, 2008 02:35 PM
Replies (5)
caz223
Jan 10, 2008 06:52 AM
Most reliable way to tell on rats is to wait a few days and look for nips.
Don't ASF have like 2 dozen nips? Should be hard to miss.
Don't wait too long, once they have full fur it could be a challenge.
Rflagg
Jan 10, 2008 09:38 AM
Do you mean sexing the new pups or the adults? If you have more than 1 male adult in there that could be the cause of your slow or non-production.
blueselaphe
Jan 10, 2008 10:24 AM
On both. I thought I had the boys and the girls all seperated but I think a few slipped here and there. I started with two trios, and this is my second litter in 4 months. They were all living together at one point due to my daughter mixing them together while cleaning cages to save time... good inititive, bad judgement there I guess.
Rflagg
Jan 10, 2008 12:14 PM
Adults shouldn't be too hard to sex, the testicles are usually fairly obvious.
look for nipples on the females, and measure the distance from anus to genitals, there is a much larger gap between them on the males.
You need to separate the males so there is only 1 male per cage.
blueselaphe
Jan 10, 2008 01:46 PM
I will try to separaete them tonight. Is the genital separation the same as it is in mice? My issue is so far, that when i just look in on them, they all seem to have the "the nads are there but not out" black sack in the back... crap, try reading that 5 times fast... as for the nipples I will pull every one out and check. I haven't had any type of fighting at all as all of them are related some how, i.e. moms, kids, brothers ect.. I am certine that I have way more males than female, will they be ok in the same cage of should I just cull a few off?
Thanks for your time,
Blue
