Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ok we are kinda new to the whole rat situation we were at petco andfound a moma with 7 babies and had to adopt them because we have a rather unkind view of petco and their treatment of animals. So anyways we take her home and unknown to us she was already pregnant! we went on vacation and came home to find 5 new babies...lol..so mom and the babies are in their own cage and the babies are in theirs and our male that we already had are in theirs. Now we have decided to breed them for our local pet store (not petco they aren't local around here) and I'm reading everything I can find but everything seems to be iffy as to when things should be done. so the first set of babies are 8 1/2 weeks old and we seperated themales fromt he females we would like to breed themin 3-4 weeks but not sure if they are going to be big enough? is it better to wait till they are a certain weight or just age? and how many males and females can you keep together at once? I actually perfer to only put them together when they are breeding. can i put 2 or 3 males in with the 5 females for a day or two then take them out they have rather large cages we wanted them to have lots of room to play...lol..well I think thats it for now. thanks for thehelp.
W

I personally wouldn't recommend breeding rats for any petstore.. Half the time they just become snake food or an abuse case.. All of my rats come from abuse cases, for example my 3 older females were found by my best friend who picks up stuff to recycle, in a damp collapsed box.. They were only about 4 weeks old, and are now about 4-5 months old.. I've been posting about my newest abuse case, and I just wish petstores and some of the people who purchase from them would take better care and consideration that they are living, breathing creatures =[

First, I would make sure your local pet store wants a new supply of rats. Second...it is never a good ideal to get into breeding just to supply a pet store with babies. You can't rely on how many the pet store takes. They may only want 6 and if they don't sell, they won't want any more.

There are plenty of websites out there that detail how to breed rats both as pets and as feeders (reptile food) but the basics apply to both.

Female rats should be at least 8 weeks old but 12-16 weeks is better. Males just need to be 8 weeks but being close to the same size as the female or bigger, is better.

Female rats go into 'season' every 4-6 days and gestation is 19-24 days. Females can also become pregnant immediately after given birth (within the first 24 hours) so keeping the male out of the cage before she gives birth is a must.

Babies wean at 3-4 weeks, become sexually mature in 4-5 weeks. Hence males and female should be separated by 4 weeks.

You can house a single male with up to 5 female rats, but a 1:2 or 1:3 grouping works best (one male to two or three females). Remember cage size. The more adult rats, the bigger the cage needs to be and you need room for the babies as well. So a small breeding group works best and having at least two females is good as you can leave the females together to help each other out on rearing the young and take the male out. In fact, you only need the male in with the females for 10 days. This ensures the female goes through at least one 'heat' and the male certainly won't miss the opportunity to do his duty.

Rat males can be housed together, unlike mice. So you certainly can put a male back in with another male, as long as both know each other.

Rats can have anywhere between 5-18 or more babies per litter, with average being around 8-12.

Females should receive a high quality rodent chow (Mazuri makes an excellent one for breeding rats as well as a maintained diet. Tekland and Harlen also have good rodent diets). Dog food, though it can be used, isn't a good diet for rats (some may feel it isn't even a good diet for dogs). Most of the prepackaged rat foods found in pet stores are not that great either. To much waste in those diets and many of the ingredients are high in fat.

I have used various types of rodent chow and have had great success with them. Also, I find large parrot diet in addition to the lab chow provides a great variety and fun for the rats. They eat all the large parrot diet, as opposed to leaving about half of the prepackaged stuff in the rat diets. THe brand of large parrot diet i use is Premium Large Parrot Diet by Hagen. (I think this is the name I just know for sure it is made by Hagan (or Hagen?). It contains alot of nuts, fruits and lab block style blocks. Probably high in fat due to all the nuts but rats certainly love it.

You can also add pretty much all the food we eat into a rat's diet as well. Greens of any type, vegetables, fruits (no citrus, tomatoes or onions), cooked lean meats (chicken, turkey, etc), not sure about fish so I won't recommend it (rather be wrong that it is bad to give to rats, than the other way). Giving rats bugs is a great treat too. Any pet store will have feeder insects such as crickets, superworms, silkworms, butter worms, mealworms, the beetles of either superworms or mealworms, and the like. Rats certainly enjoy chasing beetles and crickets about their cage. (note: if you have a wire cage for your rats, you may want to feed any bugs in a dish or rubbermaid container to prevent the crickets or beetles escaping into your house.

Wild caught bugs are not a good ideal, unless they are from areas where no insecticides are used. Not sure how sensitive rats will be to this poison but if its not recommended for reptiles, I doubt its good for rats. If you don't use insecticides and nobody in your area does, it should be safe to use wild caught bugs. However, make sure you know what bugs are you are going to feed to your rats. Some may be toxic. (hornworms for instances, are a great feeder for reptiles and rats, but wild caught ones are toxic to pretty much every animal. Farmed horn worms are fed a special diet which don't contain toxins normally found in the natural diet of horn worms (tomato leafs, tobacco leaves etc.)

Here are a couple websites that have information about raising and breeding rats as well as the advisability on doing it.

www.ratsauce.com/index.php

www.ratfanclub.org/repro.html

www.afrma.org/rmindex.htm
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PHLdyPayne

Thanks for all the info I have read a lot but some of the differences between breeders preferences are on oposite sides of the spectrum. The pet store actually has pretty high demand for them in all sizes and i wouldn't doubt for a moment that they sell them for snake food also but as a snake owner myself it is a necessity of life. All our rats are our pets and will never be snake food (our snakes like frozen anyways...lol) but to help with the cost of our rats ans snakes alike the pet stores need for rats seems to be a win win for every one. they are actually where we got ours from and were very helpful when selling them to us and also very informative about diet and stuff. Our rats actually eat an all natural diet we get from a local feed store, its part dog food which is very high in protine and then we mix it with part bird feed (thats mainly dried fruits ect.) and their rodent mixture which our rats eat absolutly everything out of (wenever have left overs) its a litte;l more expensive but wel worth it for the health of our babies. Thanks again for the help!!!

First off, if you are breeding for pets, then don't even bother with Petco rats. They are overbred, sickly and who knows what kind of genetic background they have.

If they are to be sold as feeders, you'll have much better luck on the feeder forums, I believe in the reptile section of the board.