pulling pinkies from litters

So lately we have been pulling about 14 pinkies from separate litters every other day to feed to our hatchlings. At 1st I was pulling just a few from each litter (we have about 2 or 3 new litters born every 24hrs) until we had 14.

I could have just pulled entire litters, as many of you know ASFs often have up to 20 per litter, but my thinking was that it would be bad for a heavily lactating rat to go from nursing a full litter 1 day to nothing the next day (painful for other lactating mammals so figured ASFs no different). Also, figured that by pulling just a few from the litter that the remaining pups would have more milk to divi up amongst themselves.

But I had been starting to see that the mothers were killing their remaining pups, not eating them, just killing them. We feed a very high protein dog food and have absolutely never had a problem with mothers killing their pups, until just recently, when we were removing partial litters.

We stopped now and either pull the whole litter or none at all.

Comments? Anybody been there done that? Confirmation?

Thanks!