Rat colony setup questions

If you do it that way you need even more rats because each female will be on a 3 month cycle. 1 month gestation one month nurseing until weaned then 1 month gestation again. I do plan to do exactly this because I think you will get a better yield and your females will live longer and have bigger litters I believe. But the earlier mentioned 1 female per snake will not work with this method for sure. I would probably go with at least 2 females per snake or maybe 5 females per 2 snakes.

And that will cut the number of litters to 4 a year. Hmmm...my head hurts again.

Great information...But my head hurts again...I know the birthing racks have been great for successful litters..But also the age of the female will help in the high number of pinks produced...I bred some of my females too early and only got litters of 8-9, but the next litter and with some age both got beautiful litters of 18 and all survived...We'll see if that continues, but I still have some young females in the racks and are expecting small litters...:(:(

all my females i hold back dont breed till they are 250+ grams so i know i get large litters. Sometimes i get females who never reach that size but they are sexually mature who drops 7 pinks every time. Nothing wrong with it if shes smaller but mature.

So if you leave everyone together and only get 5-7 per litter. But get twice the number of litters, it's the same as (per year) seperating them without the moving around and extra racks needed. Thoughts?

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Originally Posted by LotsaBalls

So if you leave everyone together and only get 5-7 per litter. But get twice the number of litters, it's the same as (per year) seperating them without the moving around and extra racks needed. Thoughts?

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no you won't.

idea of a birthing rack is three issues...

#1. allows mother to rest by removing her from immediate exposure to male after giving birth which would most likely result in her getting pregnant within days of giving birth

#2. removes male from exposure to offspring that will hopefully result in fewer deaths

#3. allows mother and offspring access to food.

problem I see with this logic is that mothers will fight over babies and food, so unless you plan to keep each litter and mother in their own bins...mothers will still tend to restrict each other and the babies optimum access to food and losses from fighting will still occur


without birthing racks you will get slightly less output but you will use less resources.

This discussion is exactly what I'm dealing with. I have been breeding mice for a few years with great success, but my rats have never had a good survival rate. In the past I've been keeping 1.3-1.4 in concrete tubs and never moving them. I only get about 60% of the litter grown to weans. If 3 or more drop at the same time the % is worse. I have just started using a few tubs in one of my mouse racks as birthing tubs for single moms. No drops yet, but I am confident that the survival rate will increase. Also, I 'll be able to tell who is a good mom and who isn't (replacing the bad ones). It seems to me that along with the low survival rate I have a poor growth rate. I believe what is happening is when more than one litter is born at a time one of the moms may be a better mom than the other, and ends up doing most of the work, which in turn leaves less care for each individual baby. I don't know if that's true, but I'm in the process of finding out.

We do private birthing racks here, always have and always will. I find there is a large gap in knowing who is doing what, who is producing the best etc with groups of females all together. Singly I feel is the best, and it lowers the risk of females infanticide, or fighting.

When space is tight, we will double up the two week olds, since they are beginning to eat solids and are already off to a good start, but I still prefer they all stay separate until weaned.

Been working out heavenly. :)

Im trying moving them out till they are a couple weeks old then putting a couple litters together if they are close in age. seems to go good. Now I just need to work on the smell, or so the wife says. (the rats, not me)

My recommendation is that you breed your rats at a 1.4 ratio in the cement tub racks. I prefer to keep the racks at 6 levels high due to height issues and ease of use.

Then for every cement tub rack you have you should build a birthing/nursing rack. I construct my birthing racks with medium petmate litter pans. They are 16" x 12" x 4" which is an okay size with floor space and at 4" high lets babies get up to the food.

I make the birthing racks 8 levels high and 3 tubs per level.

1 breeding rack = 6.24 adults.
1 birthing rack = room for 24 females to birth/nurse babies

This may not be the most space effective but my survival rate is near 100%. It lets you pull bad mothers out of the colony easily and gives you the most control over which females you keep back as breeders because you know which mother they came from and you can pick them based on genetic qualities.