To feed off, or not to feed off..

So the first of my second generation finally had a litter. We'll call her "A". Her mother, "B" had a litter about the same time, and another older female "C" had a litter 2 days later.

Well A saw fit to steal everyone elses babies, and raise them herself. Thats alright. Ive had that happen before, and the other mothers are pitching in and helping her do it. Well another second generation female "D", had her litter tonight, and "A" rifles through her babies as she was having them, stealing some, and eating the rest(roughly 50% of the litter). A has shown great parenting skills, but the fact that she feels she is the only rat capable of mothering, and is eating any babies she doesnt want to take care of worries. me. Should I feed her off? Or should I let her do what she does, and hopefully she grows out of it? Opinions appreciated, thank you!

Hopefully someone that breeds rats will chime in, but I would feed her off, as well as anything she produced. You can't have her killing other litters, and she's not physically capable of taking care of all of them.

I wound up feeding her off just now. The problem is she stole 3 litters already and I cant be sure which babies belonged to her. I guess Ill just have to watch them. The mother of the one I fed off has always been fantastic and is now sharing the collective litter wih the mother that had he babies stolen, so things shoukd be okay. This is the first baby eating ive experienced thoiugh, I was mortified when I realized she wasnt helping the other mother clean off the pups @_@

-Riveran

Blech! Yeah, glad it's you and not me. ;) That's good that the other new gen mom seems to be pitching in.

Female rats in groups often share the responsibility of raising pups together that is not unusual. Its very possible that she ate some of the pups because she decided there were too many... or they werent big enough (I am not an expert on why rats make the decisions they do). I normally dont put more then 3 whelping females in the same tank at a time. Go to some fancy rat breeding sites and see what they have to say.
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I have had this problem in the past. However, I built a 24 tub birthing rack and place each mother and her babies in a separate tub, I have had no problems since and production is great. It allows me to easily monitor when the babies are weaned and the mother can be put back into circulation.

If you have issues I would recommend isolating each female in a birthing tubs for the first 10 days and than do communal nursing it will cut down on losses.

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Originally Posted by Deborah

If you have issues I would recommend isolating each female in a birthing tubs for the first 10 days and than do communal nursing it will cut down on losses.

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X2 this is exactly how I solved that issue and have just a small 4tub birthing/growout rack works great :D

What Deborah said. I keep 2 females per tub and usually I have no problems but when I do I separate the mothers and their litters for the first 10 days and then consolidate.

Good to know. Ill have t build an iso rack for maternity. Thanks for the advice guys!