Bad mother

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Originally Posted by broadude

I feed my rats good, I am not prone to keeping non-producing or problem rats on the payroll.:)

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wurd.......:gj:,lmao

found more BABYS in the pine cold but alive gave them to a good mom and "dispatched "the barfly,lol:D[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3.../fronts024.jpg

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Originally Posted by Snakefreak64

found more BABYS in the pine cold but alive gave them to a good mom and "dispatched "the barfly,lol:D[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3.../fronts024.jpg

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There ya go! :rolleye2:

:gj:

The goal is to have healthy, producing rats. I would also feed off or freeze any that are aggressive, biters (don't want their offspring in the mix) or chewers.

For the chewers, they get ONE chance if they are producers... I tend to put them in the aluminum bins for a while and they stay there till they are either fed off or too old to produce at which point I dispatch. Since they don't tend to chew the aluminum they don't teach it to their kits.

I haven't had a chew out since I first began. Thinking back...wow..it has been a learning experience breeding rats, mice, gerbils and ASF (no more ASF or gerbils).. but you will have fun along the way! :)

I always give them a chance with their first litter. While mothering is instinctive, it's only PARTIALLY instinctive--they often do need practice to truly become good at it. It's not at all unusual for a first-time mom to neglect her litter, or have problems caring for it. Most of the time, the second litter is fine.

If it's NOT a first-time mom, then it could just be a defective litter, and she's not caring for them because she knows there's something wrong with them anyhow--there were stillborns in there, so that's far from impossible. As with the first-time mom, I'd give her another chance. If it happens again, she's snake food. No sense in killing off a perfectly good breeder rat for just one bad litter, after all--it takes time to raise them up to that size.

Just a quick note. Shortly after I replied to this message I had a first time mother rat have a difficult birth that resulted in 3 stillborn and 8 babies that she ignored. There was another female in the bin with her that was close to giving birth.

I moved the neglected newborns to two other female rats that recently gave birth and they accepted them just fine. I just checked on the the one that had problems and her roommate recently gave birth. The mother rat that had problems took several of the babies and was successfully feeding them in her nest.

It does take a while to raise up a healthy female to breeding size and I prefer to give them a chance if I can. I agree that chewers, aggressive rats, and problem breeders should be culled, but I think mother rats that may have had a bad litter shouldn't be put in that category.

In the end, you should do what works for you. ;)

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Originally Posted by xdeus

Just a quick note. Shortly after I replied to this message I had a first time mother rat have a difficult birth that resulted in 3 stillborn and 8 babies that she ignored. There was another female in the bin with her that was close to giving birth.

I moved the neglected newborns to two other female rats that recently gave birth and they accepted them just fine. I just checked on the the one that had problems and her roommate recently gave birth. The mother rat that had problems took several of the babies and was successfully feeding them in her nest.

It does take a while to raise up a healthy female to breeding size and I prefer to give them a chance if I can. I agree that chewers, aggressive rats, and problem breeders should be culled, but I think mother rats that may have had a bad litter shouldn't be put in that category.

In the end, you should do what works for you. ;)

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That's awesome that you already had another female in there with her so it didn't involve scrambling up established colonies. :)