Mother rat nipping kids

my rat mother is acting strange. this is the first time I seen her do it, to two of her babies.

she is kind of holding them down and giving them a bite ( two of them not all just a certain 2). the bite doesnt cause any blood so I'm guessing its not breakin the skin but when she does this she makes the babies squeak. she does this to one of them that is the smallest of the bunch and one of them that is the same size as the others.

Are they aggravating her and she is taking it out on these two? or is she doing this because she doesn't want them suckling any more? the one that is the smallest does the most suckling. Could she be doing this because she may be pregnant?

Someone tell me whats going on so i can do something asap.

If i need to i can just knock the babies out and freeze them to make room if she is acting like this because she is pregnant. I do not have anywhere else to put the babies if she is just acting like this as a temporary thing.

If she isnt breaking skin I wouldn't worry about it. I've seen a mother bite a 4 week old small rat once and kill it with one bite... so if it isnt breaking skin on a youngling then she is being very gentle.

I had some rats put aside in a tub for feeding the other day and i heard squeaking and a 4 week old rat had killed 2 pups :( sometimes these rats dont make sense.

Is it a possibility she is cleaning them "vigorously"? Maybe she is paying more attention to certain ones because they are smaller or she thinks they need it...just grabbing at ideas. If she where biting them and the skin was broken that would be different. Generally mothers won't seek out individuals unless something is wrong and sometimes they do what they think is needed by killing them.

ok, thanks both of you for the information...Something else I noticed...one of the babies she was picking on...it now has a bald patch on the lower part of its stomach directly over the *penis* ( sorry for using this word but I think its a male and i dont know the rat term for this word)

It sounds like she's stressed out and is overgrooming them, hence the bald spots. Sometimes they take out their stress by overgrooming others in the cage or themselves. It's called barbering.

Have you separated the male from her? She's probably already pregnant again if he was in there when she gave birth. That can also stress her out if she thinks that she'll have new babies soon and her current babies are still around. It's just not a healthy thing for her, the current litter, or her developing babies.