i need your thoughts and opinions

ok , let me give yall the set up first . one of the guys that works with me at the petshop also works at a local shipyard . he and his crew were cleaning up some old tin sheets at the ship yard when a large female warf rat ran out of the pile . my coworker found a newborn litter of warf rats in the pile and brought them into the petshop . we put them in with one of our nursing females and not only did they survive , but they have flurished . we now have 2 male and one female warf rats that are about two and a half months old . right now we dont know what spiecies of rats these are , but Don ( the ship yard worker ) says that he sees them as big as cats at the shipyard .

now , what i'm wanting to know is , what do yall think of putting these rats with some of our breeding stock and trying to get them to mate with them ? this is something we have been discussing at the petshop but we arent sure if it will work or not .

i'll get some pics on tuesday when i work at the petshop next and post them here so yall can see what they look like .

any thoughts or opinions would be greatly appreciated .

I would think parasite central. I don't know why you'd want to work with them but if you were attached to the boogers, I'd definitely have a fecal taken to a vet to be checked for worms and such. In any case, I'd love to see pics. I have a litter of ratties right now myself,, but of the normal variety. They're cute little boogers. ;)

What's wrong with regular rats and mice?

-adam

i think its the reports that they have been seen as large as cats. Hoping they may be a larger/faster growing line.... thats what i got out of it

Just doing a quick search on the internet indicates that wharf rats may actually be the same species as domesticated rats, rattus norvegicus. I suppose its possible that domestication has caused them to be smaller, I don't know. Wikipedia says that common names are brown rat, wharf rat, Norwegian rat, and common rat. It will definately be interesting to learn what the results of your experiment are!

Steve

i personally think it would be a cool experiment with a possibility for some cool observations. i probably wouldnt feed them off unless you're sure they dont have any parasites though.

nothing wrong with normal rats , we were just hoping to maybe breed a larger line of rats with these . also with most lab rats having fairly poor immune systems from years and years of line and inbreeding we are hoping that maybe we can get a line of rats that are less seceptible(sp) to illness . they do grow very fast . when we got them they were less than 24 hours old . we know this because the mother hadnt had time to even clean the afterbirth off of them . they were put in with a nursing female with 2 week old babies and these critters outgrew the babies that were 2 weeks older than them in about 3 weeks .

we havent decided for sure yet if we will try to breed them or not . i was just mainly looking to see if anyone thinks this is feasable or not .

As long as they are paracite/disease free i dont see why it wouldnt work, but i may be missing something.

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Originally Posted by markface

nothing wrong with normal rats , we were just hoping to maybe breed a larger line of rats with these . also with most lab rats having fairly poor immune systems from years and years of line and inbreeding we are hoping that maybe we can get a line of rats that are less seceptible(sp) to illness . they do grow very fast . when we got them they were less than 24 hours old . we know this because the mother hadnt had time to even clean the afterbirth off of them . they were put in with a nursing female with 2 week old babies and these critters outgrew the babies that were 2 weeks older than them in about 3 weeks .

we havent decided for sure yet if we will try to breed them or not . i was just mainly looking to see if anyone thinks this is feasable or not .

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Well, the surrogate mom has already been exposed to these, as well as the babies she was already nursing. Why not breed them to their "adopted family"? I'm no expert, but I think if they were that young when you got them, and they're still doing ok, they're probably healthy.

How are their dispositions? Any noticable behavior differences?

Steve

I would suggest you segregate all the wild rats and any domestic rat that's been exposed to them immediately. Have fecals done on the whole lot (some parasites can infect babies prior to birth). Once you know they are either disease free or you have treated them, then the next thing I'd personally be concerned about is temperment. Temperment in rats is shown to be heavily gentic. Domesticated rats are generally bred for it to some degree to make them easier to handle (I cull out any breeder that shows an aggressive temperment). I'd watch very carefully that you aren't introducing poor temperment into a stable rat population by introducing wild bloodlines. A rat bite, especially from a large rat, is nothing to sneeze at....they can easily bite you to the bone and slash at you faster than you can begin to react to it. Rat bites tend to fester quickly.