Breeding Rats

Tonight my rats have seemed to mate for the first time. Tomorrow I want to know if they had a successful mating and to see if my female is pregnant. Is there any way I will know? I heard about the plugs and if I check her and there's a spearm plug there then does that mean that she is pregnant? And is the only way I'm going to know is if there is a plug there?

Oh, and I've been reading about breeding rats and still can't decide if I'm supposed to leave the male in with the female during the birth? Because I think I heard that the male helps out, and on another thing I think it said that the male might kill the babies or something so please let me know so nothing bad happens. Thanks for any help!:colbert2:

Personally I just leave my females in with the male until they develop a very distinct pear shape that indicates to me the breeding took. I've never tried to check for the plug thing though I've read about it. As far as leaving the male rat in, some do, some don't. Normally male rats are excellent parents and will not harm their own young. They will however attempt to mate the female very quickly after she's given birth so that's why I put my females in their own 10 gallon tanks to await the birth and then raise their young in peace and quiet. I don't like to have my females carrying a new litter while still nursing the previous one.

Is it bad to have the rat pregnant right after birthing? Does it make a difference wether or not the rat's nursing and carrying another litter?

Look this is just my opinion okay but if you are going to purposely breed any animal you need to have some concern for the female's health and a basic understanding at least of rodent reproduction.

If her body is burning energy to both grow developing rats inside her and put out sufficient milk for the care of her current nursing litter she's going to have to be either fed very well or those nutrients are going to come out of her own stores. In other words she'll can down hill, get skinny, etc. if she's both pregnant and nursing litters then constantly rebred. I know some people do back to back birthings and that's their option but I don't agree with it. No female animal in my opinion deserves to be bred like that.

I keep enough females that all my females spend the last week of their pregnancy in a seperate tank. They birth there, raise their pups to weaning age then go to another tank where they spend some time rebuilding their own body before being reintroduced to the male rat. This does mean I keep more females than some, and I don't produce the number of litters from each female that some do. That's fine with me I'm not trying to do production breeding, just to provide high quality feeders for our snake collection and do so in a way that respects the rats for their contribution to that end.