Aggressive male

Thank you for all the opinions and experainces.

He was raised with other rats, not by himself. I had him in with 2 young females since I recently acquired some new rats. I put him back into the bin with those 2 young females. He will get a chance to be with them in the bin for their first litter and see if he harms the babies then. If so, he's a goner. There's entirely too many male rats available at that point.

The odd thing is that I remembered late last night, I had gotten another new young male, nearly identical to him, but from another source, and put HIM in with a different bin(prior to the mauling incident). That bin also had babies, but those babies were big enough to have just gotten fur on them. He has shown no desire to hurt babies. Of course, I don't know if he's simply more timid, those females are more protective, or the babies being big enough to have fur is the reason behind his 'kindness' towards the litter.

At any rate, it's a learning experiance and next time I will wait to place any new male into a bin of females until there's no babies in the bin. I appreciate the discussion. When I kept rats before I didn't have too many issues.

And for females with first litters, I always give them leeway on the first litter. It's when they continue to kill their babies that I cull them. New moms that have undue stress due to moves or any strange incidents are likewise given leeway. That's why I was unsurprised when two litters were killed so soon after I got the colony and moved them, shuffling all the rat groups around, since I had no way to know which rats had been grouped together.

Well, Mr Murdering Buzzard had his second chance. I put him right back in with the two girls he had been raised with, and one gave birth late yesterday to 7 pinks.

He killed every one of them by this morning.

Haurie the BP enjoyed him this afternoon. Problem solved. Problem staying solved.

Uh that sucks!

This is when I don't feel bad for them.

However. I did put two females together for birthing. 1 first time pregnant mom and one of my experienced moms with a litter.
First time pregnant mom ate a bunch of the babies before I checked on them. I separated them, but I was sure she was going to eat her litter. She gave birth 3 days later and has turned out to be a very protective and good mom!

I have had 1.1 groups til lately...I now have 1.3 groups and still one 1.1 group and have no issues (YET!) My pinks are fat and healthy... I noticed the other day that the (1.1 group) my male rat was helping take care of the pinks! Has anyone else's rats done this? or is this a normal thing for the male to help?

I know ASF males care for the young while the females play, eat or just relax..but havent seen or heard of the REGULAR OL' male rat doing the same.:D

Kinda like men, some will help with the kids and some wont.

Almost all the males here will babysit and lay on the nest and such. This one murdering bugger has been the only one to do this sort of thing. I expect a bad mom once in a while, but never have had a male just whole-sale slaughter a litter for no reason.

Hopefully that'll be the ONLY one.