I finally built a rat breeding rack!! :)

It's just a small one; just a 2-rack because that's all I have the space or the need for at the moment, but it will certainly afford me the space and the ability to breed my own rats now.

Any advice on male to female ratio? My current plan has 1.3 in the bottom rack for breeding, and then the weaned offspring will go in the top one.

In any event, I'm excited to finally have it. :)

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1...0718-02329.jpg

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1...0718-02332.jpg

I'll only be using the dog food for a little while. Once it's depleted I'll be looking to use the actual rat feed.

With 3 females, you have the potential to have 40+ babies all the same size, if they have their litters at the same time, which is too many rats for one tub. You could rotate females in with the male, so that the litters are different ages, but that would require at least 1 or 2 more tubs, so that you had one for the male by himself, one for the females (ideally each female would have their own birthing tub so that newborn babies aren't competing with older ones if the moms put them all together), and one for weaned. If you don't separate the weaned rats by sex, you'll have to be sure they are fed off by 7-8 weeks of age, before they have babies themselves (they are capable of making babies at 4-5 weeks)

Lol congrats on that little project.

Well that's good then. :) I'd rather have too many babies than not enough. If I get overrun I have plenty of hungry snakes that will knock off several undersized meals at once. I''ll also have 5 baby balls hatching out in a month, and potentially 8 or more additional ones soon if Iris lays eggs as it appears she''s going into ovulation now. And if worse comes to worse I have a couple of aquariums that can handle the overflow, although I hope not to use them.

In short, I can remedy too many babies a lot easier than too few, so I'm happy to hear that I have such potential from one tub.