1.4 rat typical yield

A friend of mine is strongly arguing that no matter what, if I leave the moms in with the dads, the dads will eat roughly half the babies. "You'll see", he keeps saying.

If this is sometimes the case, what do I do to keep it from happening? Get rid of any Buck that does that?

I've only had dads kill babies a few times. One male I ended up culling because he killed more than one litter. Generally the males will actually let babies cuddle up on them, in my limited experience. I've got about 15 different bins of rats with males in with each female group and haven't had the issue in a while.

For my own curiosity, what does your friend feed his rats?

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Originally Posted by ClarkT

A friend of mine is strongly arguing that no matter what, if I leave the moms in with the dads, the dads will eat roughly half the babies. "You'll see", he keeps saying.

If this is sometimes the case, what do I do to keep it from happening? Get rid of any Buck that does that?

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Rats fed well on quality food wont harm babies, but help care for them. If a Male eats the young its either in the genes and itll end up being passed on to the babies,so youd want to gas him off and get a new male brought up.

But ive never had any get eaten but once. And that was the females beating up the male and eating their young for some odd reason after 8 months breeding. They were gassed and replaced

Rich is correct. Like I said earlier quality food is the key! If their nutrition is lacking, they are much much much more likely to eat their young. :)

He is now feeding them large breed dog food. Back when he had the problem with males eating some of the litters, it was cheaper dog food... On this stuff it seems his rats are flourishing. He's having huge litters, fatter/chubbier pups, and overall healthier rats. I hope to come up with mazuri 6f, but I'm in a remote, rural area. Not a whole lot of options to me, hence building a shed and breeding my own rats.

Theres food you can order online for like 80-100$ shipped for 200lbs of quality food.

Dog food bad, and most of it is not good for dogs let alone rats. They will develop greasy looking fur, bald spots or aka Hot Spots from too much fat and protein which in turn causes liver/kidney failure

If he's having males that will definitely eat the young, his rats are not "thriving". Check out a place like the National Pet Pharmacy site that will ship the food to you for the ease of getting quality food for not too much money.

What food on National pet pharmacy do you use? What food do you use, Rich?

Great thread. Love all the info, I try to keep groups together if possible but often I will need to separate females to raise the young to get good litters raised at the cost of efficiency. I use labpro rmh500 it's kinda expensive now I pay $30 per 50lbs, up from $25 last year, still looking for a good supply source in MA

Native Earth brand rat diet. I've got another 3 bags arriving wednesday in fact.