breeding question

[steve_r34]

how many years/ litters can I get out of a female ?
breaks are between 3/4 months

how long does a rat even live ?
that's bad ... I should have looked that up a while ago lol ...

n e way asked that cause my plan is to just have enough females to where they have 1 litter a year .will that make them live longer healthy lives then breeding them 3/4 times a year

[sorraia]

Will depend on a number of factors: nutrition, how young you start breeding them, beans between litters, litter sizes, and the individual animal and her ability to bounce back.

When I bred for pet and show, productivity wad not important, and I only bred females once or twice. They routinely lived 2 or 3 years in good health. Through the progress of my being program I was seeing life span increase, but I doubt I would have seen anything as dramatic as doubling it.

For production purposes, I doubt you'd want to keep enough females to only breed them once or twice. Of course that depends on your needs too. I think giving them a couple months breaks in between litters is sufficient.

Right now I'm keeping about a dozen females, breeding 2 at a time, pairing males and females every 1 to 2 weeks. This is keeping up with my needs (feeding 10 ball pythons and I do f/t), while also allowing each female a couple months break between litters.

[steve_r34]

I got a dz females to ... I thought they lived longer then that ... thanks for the info

[j94712]

It depends on your breeding rotation. The litter size will depends on the food that you feed, female and male age, and of course their living condition. Here are some infos for breeding rotation,
http://www.metalmonkeyexotics.com/blog/?page_id=329

This website is great because it gives you most of the info you need to know about breeding and keeping rats! Highly recommend you read and browse through the whole website!