Whos the mother?

Right now i have 2 females and 1 male living in a tub. And have had only one batch of pinkies so far which turned out good with 10 pinkies very healthy. Now i woke up to notice there is 4 very little pinkies in the tub. 1. How do i figure out who the mother is? (I have an extra tub to place the mother and babies in) 2. 4 seems to be a very low number, so why did i end up with 4 this time? I want to seperate the mother and babies since they were getting stepped on and buried. And opinions or help would be great. Thanks

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Originally Posted by Kimosobey

Right now i have 2 females and 1 male living in a tub. And have had only one batch of pinkies so far which turned out good with 10 pinkies very healthy. Now i woke up to notice there is 4 very little pinkies in the tub. 1. How do i figure out who the mother is? (I have an extra tub to place the mother and babies in) 2. 4 seems to be a very low number, so why did i end up with 4 this time? I want to seperate the mother and babies since they were getting stepped on and buried. And opinions or help would be great. Thanks

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You can't separate the mother and babies..the babies will die.

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Originally Posted by Kimosobey

Right now i have 2 females and 1 male living in a tub. And have had only one batch of pinkies so far which turned out good with 10 pinkies very healthy. Now i woke up to notice there is 4 very little pinkies in the tub. 1. How do i figure out who the mother is? (I have an extra tub to place the mother and babies in) 2. 4 seems to be a very low number, so why did i end up with 4 this time? I want to seperate the mother and babies since they were getting stepped on and buried. And opinions or help would be great. Thanks

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rats and mice WILL bury there babies to protect them.. No matter how "domesticated" they may become they will ALWAYS have there natural way of thinking. I would NOT separate them. It's easier to just keep them together AND it helps you weed out not only bad mothers, but bad fathers. IMO it also helps to tame them out. I'm not going to comment on the size of the litter, but I have noticed my smaller and younger mothers give me less 3-8 babies, while my larger give me 10-14.

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Originally Posted by evan385

You can't separate the mother and babies..the babies will die.

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He means separate the mother AND the babies TOGETHER, from the other female and male.

Do you know the last time each of them had babies? If you take into account gestation time and their last litters, you should be able to know which one could have been pregnant.

Another thing to check if the babies were very recently birthed, would be to check for blood on the mother. You can also check their nipples, nursing mothers will typically have slightly enlarged nipples, with fur receding slightly, and may be damp from the babies nursing.

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Originally Posted by zeion97

He means separate the mother AND the babies TOGETHER, from the other female and male.

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Haha okay, I was gonna say xD

They will walk on them, but it won't hurt the babies, and burying them is not an issue. They do that deliberately sometimes.

You can check both moms to see which is nursing, but you don't HAVE to separate out the mom with her babies. Both moms may feed and care for whatever pinkies are in the tub.

It's all personal preference, but I wouldn't separate the babies unless the mothers couldn't take of them or if the mothers were fighting over them.

I lost 5 newborns last week because two mothers were doing tug-o-war with the babies. The moms had litters on the same day and had two separate nests. They kept trying to ferry all the babies into their own nest.
The 5 babies were all torn up and bloody so I euthanized them. After that, I separated the moms and divided the rest of the babies between the two.

A week later, I put both groups back together. Now both are taking care of one big combined nest of babies. All is well

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