Staged weaning for Rats

With my rats I do staged weaning. Ive found that staged weaning helps the dam (female rat) and the pup (the litter) much more than an abrupt stop.

Alot of people in the rat business refer to rats as "weaned or weanlings" at 3 weeks of age. To me weaned means that they are able to subsist solely on food and water not provided by their mother. While the 3 week old pups can eat some solid food and may drink a bit of water they still rely heavily upon their mother for most of their nutrition. The dam wont usually start to kick the pups away until they are 4-5 weeks of age.

I dont normally start weaning my pups until the beginning of the 4th week. The first day I will pull the dam out for 2-3 hrs. The 2nd day for 3-5, the 3rd day for 6-8, the 4th day I will put her with the pups for two 2 hr increments, and the 5th day she will only be put in for 1-2 hrs total.

There are marked differences between the sizes of the pups that have undergone staged weaning compared to an abrupt weaning at 3-3.5 weeks.

I should mention at this point that I like to run "experiments". Which food works best, is there noticeable differences between beddings, what does adding 25% shredded paper to bedding do, which bedding is processed fastest by my worms (I have raised and experimented with European Nightcrawlers for about 2 years), what temps are best, etc., etc., etc.

Below are pictures of 2 females. They both come from the same litter and are approx 7 weeks old.

The one with the black head was weaned at 3.5 weeks, the one with a cream head was stage weaned from 4-5 weeks (like outlined above).

Here they are together desecrating money. You can tell a slight difference in size.
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...edweaning3.jpg

Here is the black capped one on a scale (in grams). Wish I had gotten a better picture, but she wasnt being very cooperative.

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...crap/SW70g.jpg

Here is the cream capped

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...crap/SW98g.jpg

(They are in Iris 5.4 qt shoeboxes. The scale was zeroed out to subtract the weight of the box.)

There is a difference of 28 grams in weight. Both females have been housed solely with females since 3.5 weeks of age.

The difference with dams has only been by what ive noted. With the staged weaning they seem to recover for their next litter alot faster (this is most likely due to females on staged weaning are kept from males for 5 weeks instead of 3.5 weeks) I also seem to have fewer stillborns and pups that die in the first 2 days.

If more info is needed or needs to be clarified please post back.

Bryan

I completely agree that leaving the rats on mothers milk + food is a major boost to their growing size.

I was going to make a post because I was confused about one litter I had... they started out normal size, but started chowing food big time at week 2.5 I left them in with their mother and chowing on food until week 4.5 at which point they weighed like 140 grams... by age 5.5-6 they were over 180 grams O.o


I still havnt had many babies grow up yet , they keep getting fed off, is this a normal size?


When you weighed these guys they were both 5 weeks old right?

BTW, great info, Im going to try this just to see how it works (with as many as I can find time to do). Do the mothers ever end up forgetting about their babies and being agressive towards them when they are put back in?

Thanks for the explanation Bryan. I'm definitely going to give this a try with my new few rat litters and see how it goes. We've always had very good results with our colony but hey, I'm always open to try anything that can improve the end result. Thanks again!

All of my non-first time females will readily take their pups (and pretty much any other) with no problems. Toward the 5th day they do tend to kick at them a bit to get them off the nipple.


2.5 weeks seems a bit early to be on solid foods. Most strains are 45 - 80 grams at 5-6 weeks. There are however "jumbo" strains, a 7 day old pup will be the equivalent weight and size of 2-3 week old pups. Ive never heard of or seen jumbos start on solid foods that early though. That would have been a great litter to "experiment" with.

Bryan

Hrm I didnt think it was a jumbo strain, but from what Ive seen so far she must have been doing something right. I fed them off at 6 weeks 180 grams Weird...

I need to figure out where that mother went and mark her :)