New to Rat Breeding

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Originally Posted by accidental777

That is a really good question. I would eventually like to have all of my females seperated out once I know for sure that they are going to have a litter. I have had issues with litters being born at diferent times. They do get mixed in with newer litters and I am pretty sure that there is some loss associated with that. I do not believe that I am getting the maximum survival rate that I wish I could have due to that.
I like to pull my 4 week old rats to minimize that, but there are times when as you said, there are litters that are 2-3 weeks apart. The moms do their best, but I am sure that I lose 15% of newer litters because of the fact that they have to compete for food with the other litters or they get trampled/suffocated.

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One thing that I will do to try to avoid this type of loss is to move some of the younger pups into one of your other tubs with pups close in age. Most of my rats will take the pups without issue. I'm not going to tell you that this is 100% successful, but I can tell you that I had two runts from a large litter that I moved to a tub that had pups that were about a week younger and both runts are now thriving. When I do this, I try to take some of the bedding around the other pups I want to put the them in with and let them roll around in it for a couple mins...either that or I clean the tub I am transferring them to and put them in with the litter so that hopefully some of the scent gets on them. I've had pretty good success so far like I said, but it doesn't always work.

Very good to know!!!!! Thanks for that tib bit. I was kind of wondering if someone had a better way of doing that. I have been doing this for a little over a year now, and it still helps to get tips on improving survival rates. I am definantly a fan of finding ways to cut down on losses. It maybe wouldn't hurt to have even just a couple of females that are kept by themselves with their litters. Just in case I do need to add a few 2-3 three week old pups to their litters.
That would make a great deal of sense. I always have a couple of smaller set aside for males that are taking a break.