Reptile & Amphibian Forums

OK Question: When rats give birth is there a lot of after birth and blood? The reason I ask is that I have a colony of rats that killed off their offspring a little while ago but I attributed it to the fact that they were not settled in their new home and there was a really lot of activity going on around them at the time (building of their cabinet around them). This same colony just had another litter but it only has three pups and the day they were born there was a lot of blood in the bin. I mean two spots bigger than the size of an average man’s hand. The bedding that I am using is shredded paper and the blood seems to have been absorbed to a large degree, as well as the fact that they move the bedding around as required. You can still see the blood mixed in the bedding but not as obvious. The mom seems to be taking care of the three pups but I am suspicious that I may have a psycho rat in this colony that killed some of the litter off at birth. I know that three pups is a small litter but I think that may change with future litters as the colony becomes more comfortable in their new home. They have been in their rack now for a little over 2 weeks. I am feeding them cheap dog food, they lots of space according to the U of Michigan, and I check in on them once a day otherwise they have lots of privacy.

So it comes back to the seemingly large amount of blood, is this normal or am I looking at starting this colony over? Who needs a psycho rat in a breeding colony?

Thanks for any help or advice,
Bruce

that sounds like an abnormal amount of blood. Is it possible to remove the mother when it becmoes obvious that she is pregnant and house her alone? I would do that and see what happens. If you have one with a few pups, maybe you kill off the others, let her raise these to adulthood and have them as your new breeders.

>>OK Question: When rats give birth is there a lot of after birth and blood? [litter] only has three pups and the day they were born there was a lot of blood in the bin. ... The bedding that I am using is shredded paper ...

The problem with shredded paper, is that it does tend to make any amount of blood appear more noticeable than any other bedding would. Even a small amount of blood will be "wicked" through the fibres of the paper, so that it spreads and looks like more than it is. If the paper additionally gets moistened from another source (urine, dripped water) the blood will colour the other fluid, and thus appear to be a far greater quantity than it actually is.

If your rat had lost a great amount of blood, she'd not have survived. As far as having possibly eaten a number of pups -- it is possible, but it is also quite possible that her ltter was only three babies. Surprisingly, rats do occasionally give birth to very small litters, and sometimes even to singletons.

>>The mom seems to be taking care of the three pups but I am suspicious that I may have a psycho rat in this colony that killed some of the litter off at birth. ...

She may be a very good momma, but maybe not a big producer. Next time around, try setting her up solitarily in a birthing cgae, and see what transpires. I've had mommas that consistently produced very large litters, but I've also had mommas that never produced more than five or six babies in a ltter. And then, there are those that sometimes have big litters and sometimes have small litters in a very inconsistent manner.
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tricia