Rank the Smell!!!

Rats are pretty easy to clean out, when the mamas have a littler of babies. They will pee/defecate only on the opposite side of the cage, as their nest. So you take a small dustpan and scoop out the dirty bedding, while leaving the litter alone.
However, I have taken to just grabbing the whole nest of babies, placing them in an already-cleaned tank, with the mama, and going on from there. :)

I have no sence of smell at all, so ntohing stinks to me but my wife siad the mice where the worst she smelt.

Adam what is your normal gerbil sized littler my female just gave me 3 babies but 2 didnt make it 3rd is being raised as a pet for my daughter now as my male who was having them bred for him started back on rats several weeks ago I was so glad it didnt come to gerbs.

I used to breed gerbils and sometimes had litters in the numbers of 8 or so, but 6 was the usual number. They are very good parents and won't kill the babies(unless they can't feed them all). Most of mine are still alive, LoL, and living the good life(if you can call it that) at my college.

I breed mice now, for food for Dillinger and occassionally Amani, and for fun. I love seeing the patterns and colors I get. I am going to breed 2 satin-coated black patched together and see what I get. Hopefully no megacolon, since they will be high-white. Yeah, they do smell some, but if you thoroughly clean the cage every 5-7 days, it works out fine.

I agree, breeding rats is a lot of fun.

I have a litter of rexes right now, and they are the cutest things!

I need a male dumbo ear to go with my female apricot dumbo. Dumbo rats are so sweet.

Waiting on a litter of blue hoodeds right now as well.. and I just found a seal point siamese rat at petsmart.. he's so cute!

[QUOTE=Shelby]Dumbo rats are so sweet[QUOTE]

HAH! That's funny... you should tell that to two of mine... They are devil spawn. Spastic as all get out, whiners, nippers, cause fights to break out... Little turds. One came from a breeder and is registered and pedigreed, and the other is a Petco rescue. The one from the breeder is worse. Doesn't like being held and has alot of protein sensitivity. The Petco one is just weird all around...

Well the two that I've had are angels. The apricot girl will come over and lick my fingers when I'm checking on them.

I have to agree that breeding/raising rats...and even the mice is nearly 25% of the fun keeping reptiles. I have only starting back into rats since this summer because I was given some free females and now I have a pretty smooth operation going. Its cool to see what comes out, out of my silverish/white stud and this plain brown female I have gotten: black, black with white blotch on the back, half black half brown, half black half white, black head white body with black splotch, solid brown...and probably some others I am forgetting.

I am hoping to move over solely to rats...I will probably have to keep at least one pair of mice though since I still have some smaller snakes...and now a really really small snake :P

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Python-77

Adam what is your normal gerbil sized littler

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The young girls start out with 3-4 and then make it up to about 6 by the time they are full grown.

-adam

I have to admit, rat breedng is fun. I am waiting on a solid black female to have her litter; she was bred with a siamese male. Who knows what will happen? I really need some new blood though; I am sick of grays. But my best male is gray, so we are stuck with that for awhile!!

Know what you mean!

Now we have some solid blondes and whites, a lush black one with a white crest a number of greys and an insane number of the bicolored - it's pretty neat to see the genetic inheritence since the turnaround from pinkie to breedable is realtively fast (compared to say BPs lol).