Abandoned pinks

[kc261]

I have 9 baby pinks that are about 2 days old and have been receiving little to no care from their 2 mothers. The litters were born less then 24 hours apart, so I can't tell them apart, but neither mother seems to be doing much for the babies at all. Every time I've checked (about 2x/day) the babies have been cold and most of them had no visible milk bands. More than half of the original number have died already.

I also have another litter in another tub that was born the same day. Those are doing great. I decided to try fostering the 9 remaining pinks from the bad mothers with the good mother. I took most of her babies out temporarily (I'm keeping them warm in a little pouch up against my body) because the abandoned ones are pretty weak and I didn't want them to have to compete with their foster sibs until they got some food in them. I'm going to check the situation in an hour and decide what to do from there.

I know others have done this successfully, and was hoping for any tips.

Also, the 2 bad mothers are both first time moms. I haven't had any other issues with my bloodlines being good mothers. Most of them, including these 2, came from a 1.3 group, so they should have good mothering genes. Are these 2 likely to figure it out next time? Anything I can do to help them figure it out? Like would pairing them with an experienced mother instead of leaving these 2 together work?

[satomi325]

It could just be first time mom issues. Hopefully they do better next time. If not, I would cull them.
Pairing new moms with an experienced mother will help. Especially if that experienced mother has a litter at the same time too.

Hopefully your 3rd mama adopts your abandoned 9.
When putting in strange babies into a nest, you want them to try to smell like the mother's babies as much as possible. Rub them with some soiled pee bedding and it's best to integrate them into the mother's litter. She might foster them no matter what, but for the best chances, you want them to smell like her pups. I don't think they would have to compete much for milk. They rotate nursing times. I've had a female successfully suckle 20+ pups because the second mother in the tub basically decided to give herself a vacation.

[ViperSRT3g]

I've had a female successfully suckle 20+ pups because the second mother in the tub basically decided to give herself a vacation.

Haha I couldn't help but think to myself "What a b****"

[chadphillips8352]

I've had a mother rat successfully take over for two other litters. While I'm getting my breeding colony up and going, I've still been supplementing my rats with babies from a rat breeder. Twice, they've been just a little too small, either for my snakes or to feed themselves, and my mother rat took to them with no problems. She's such a sweet girl.

[kc261]

Thanks for the replies!

Update: 3 more have died, and 1 looks really iffy, but the remaining 5 now have milk in their bellies! Yay! Not all of them were all the way full, but it gives me some hope.

I ended up keeping the group of babies from the good momma out of the tub for 2 hours. After a quick check at 1 hour, I decided it would be good to go longer, cuz at that point, I couldn't tell for sure if the foster babies had any milk in their bellies, and I could tell the ones I was holding still had a good bit of milk. By 2 hours, some of them were looking sorta empty, so it was time for them to go back.

Satomi, I did leave some of the good mother's litter in with the foster babies, partly because of the smell issue, partly because the foster babies were sooo weak & barely moving and I thought the good mother might not even recognize they were alive due to the contrast with her own much stronger babies. So I wanted her to see at least some life in the pile! What I did was remove the mother so she wouldn't see me messing with them, then looked at her litter and removed 9 that had really full bellies and left 4 that weren't as full and mixed in the foster babies, and finally put the mother back in. I'm not sure if I did right or she's just one of those good mother's who will mother anything, but I'm not complaining cuz it seems to be working. I just wish I'd intervened earlier, but I thought those first time moms would figure it out.

Ironically, the one I've been referring to as the "good mother" is on her second litter, and she barely mothered her first litter at all. However, I thought that was caused by the other momma that was with her being dominant and taking over all the babies. So I just separated the one I thought was less dominant, which does seem to have fixed the problem. But now that I'm thinking about it, I guess this isn't the first time I've had mothering issues with these rats, it's just the first time that another momma hasn't taken over. I guess time will tell. I'm sure as my colony matures I'll be able to select the better mothers and improve my lines.

[kc261]

I thought I'd update this.

None of the babies from the original 2 litters with bad mommies survived. I think I just waited too long to foster them.

When those 2 females were getting close to ready to pop the next time around, I separated them so each one of the 2 had her own private tub. I figured this was best to reduce any distractions, sources of stress, etc. Both have been doing a fine job of raising their 2nd litter, which are now at the fuzzy stage. One even has a rather large litter, 18 babies! and although they are growing a bit slower, they all look healthy.