Hey guys, I have 4 Bp's and 1 juvy burm who eats like a large Bp right now. I started breeding rats around late april if I had to guess. I began with 5 females, and one male. I was told the females had never bred before. Took them a while to get started, but eventually they all popped out litters.

I tried to feed off males first, and keep all my females, but my odds have been terrible. I lost 2 litters due to bad parenting, and I only got 3 females from my first wave of litters, and 5 from my second wave of litters. Now all my starters have had 2 litters and need to retire. 2 of my hold backs are pregnant but the other 5 females are still too young and even once they are old enough I have to wait out the pregnancy.

Im at the point now, where im completely out of feeders, the ones retiring are too large for even my burm, and Im going to have to buy F/T rats just to keep them feeding regularly until my rats catch up. I have looked on craigslist for more females, buts its been pretty dry. The pet stores in my area are all male only. I do know one pkace that sells live feeders, but I dobt trust the health of their animals at all.

So now my question. Does anyone know of a way to increase the speed of production? more males, smaller colonies, just plain more females, a different species, such as african soft furs perhaps? Im still pretty new at this and dont know all the tricks for success quite yet = P