New group(1.5) few Q's

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Originally Posted by tomfromtheshade

If you pull all of the babies off of her just put her back into the breeding tub. Rats don't need a lot of recovery time. In fact, they really don't need any recovery time. You will burn the female out faster by breeding them constantly, but mine don't breed for more than a year before I pull them anyway so it doesn't really matter to me.

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sounds like my OLD method. Great way to produce smalls. I have changed my approach in order to supply a variety.

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Originally Posted by f4n70m

Now let me ask you this. Say she has her babies. And i only let her nurse em for a few days before they become snake food. How long of a break should i give her before breeding her again since she didnt nurse the full 21 days or whatever

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I would say it all depends on the size of the litter. When the hooded girl had the first two litters, I bred her again right after having them. Since she just had 19, I'll be giving her a break to just nurse and recover. Not sure how long it'll be. Anywhere from 1-4 weeks, depending on how she looks to me.

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Originally Posted by tomfromtheshade

Gestation is usually about 22 days. Not that it makes much of a difference.

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I say it depends on the litter size. My breeder was prego for 21 or 22 days for her first litters, and the big 19 litter she seemed to be pregnant for about 4 weeks.

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Originally Posted by Shenzi Sixaxis

I say it depends on the litter size. My breeder was prego for 21 or 22 days for her first litters, and the big 19 litter she seemed to be pregnant for about 4 weeks.

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Ok ok....How do you know when your female became pregnant? My males thump females in their tubs constantly hour after hour and day after day. Unless you run a 1.1 and have them on video camera how do you know even when the first time they copulated was? I might be able to break it down to a three day period, maybe....but how are you guranteeing a day and such a short time frame at that?

Pure curiousity here.

My buck only tries mating when the females are in heat an when they start to smell a little different before birth. Any time he's been with a female, I have pups within 4 weeks after he was introduced.

I just sort of know. Hard to explain.

okay, so you are adding a male to a tub and going 4 weeks from when the male is added or you are personally smelling your rats for this scent you speak of and going from that?

Getting close to an uncomfortable level of "pure curiosity" now.

A lot of times when I put new rats together the male will start wailing one of the girls right away...within minutes. So, I can be certain of the day that she got knocked up in that case LOL.

I started waiting until the females are 16 weeks old before putting the male in with them and that has seriously shortened the waiting time for them to start producing. I used to put them together at 12 weeks and sometimes you would be waiting a while before any babies started showing up.

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Originally Posted by suzuki4life

okay, so you are adding a male to a tub and going 4 weeks from when the male is added or you are personally smelling your rats for this scent you speak of and going from that?

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Birth has a certain scent. I don't know how to explain it. It's a light but somewhat pleasant scent. Somewhat like raw, fresh almonds you just cracked yourself.

so is it safe to assume you aren't sniffing the rats breath when you speak of this?

My rat building smells like rat bedding, either clean pine or pi$$y pine depending on how close to Tuesday we are LOL.

I could have fifty females giving birth in there at the same time and would have no idea what birthing smells like. It always either smells like pine or dirty pine LOL.