My Rats Popped Out a Litter!

No pics sorry. She did it 2 days ago, and I went to check on the babies and 2 of them had their skin split open. One had its whole side split and one looked like it had a huge chunk of skin missing out of its head..you could see organs and stuff...so I fed them off. But none of the other babaies were like this, so what happened??

Thanks.

Hard to say exactly but sounds like somebody was being a bad parent :colbert: I would just keep an eye on them. How many rats are in there?

They sometimes (it's more rare w rats than mice) will kill a few babies if they are not being fed enough. Or, if there is more than one adult male in the mix, the one who isn't the father may have done it. Or if you added any new rats to that colony after the female became pregnant.

Or occasionally they are deformed.

I had several kits recently that had their whole spinal column exposed as well as the brain had no skull cap so it was exposed.

Gruesome to say the least, but it happens :(

There were 8 to begin with, and 2 were screwed up. The female who gave birth was orginally a feeder that was never eaten. I put her in a tub with a male and 2 other females, she was in there for about a week week and a half. Then I put her in another tub with another feeder male that again, was never eaten. She gave birth in the tub with that male there. I'm sure the babies are not his. But he seems to be ignoring them and going about his business. I check on them all the time, and every time I check the female is almost always nursing the babies.

Right now 2 big female hooded rats are extremley pregnant and should give birth in about a week. I heard that the white rats with red eyes produce much better than the ones that are colored. So I'm going to weed out the colored ones and make them feeders, and save a lot of the white ones and make them breeders. Right now I have 5 rats, 2 males, 3 females. 1 white male is in a tub with 2 colored females, they will give birth soon. And in another tub I have a female white and a male white. This is the female that just gave birth.


I have a question, I got the 2 colored rats at the zoo I work at, and I have no idea how old they are (they are pretty big rats) and I have had them for a while, more than enough time for them to give birth to at least one litter. And the female that gave birth to the litter a couple days ago was pretty small when I put her in the tub with the 2 colored females and the white male, and she gave birth BEFORE the ones that were with the male before her!

Are they too old? Should I retire them and get new stock?

They could have had a defect or were stills or weaker animals. Also the male could have screwed with them and mom was protecting the others. Or she could have felt that she could provide for all. Females also generally go through a menopause at 2 so if they are pretty large they may be at the ending of their fertility. Giving inconsistent and smaller litters.

The 2 colored females just gave birth. One gave birth to 11 babies, and the other had 7. I'm starting to think they aren't to old yet!

That's a good thing. They might be coming into it. They'll be able to reproduce but intsead of it being on time and countable it'll become very irregular. And then they go into not being able to reproduce at all.