Help me plan/setup a feeder colony? (rats)

Thanks for the post Bryan! Lots of great information in there for me to sort through and use.

About females biting you to the bone (ouch!) Do you use gloves for females with litters that might be a little fussy?

Are most of your rittens weaned by 3 or 4 weeks?

Also, who do you sell your extras too? That is one concern I have , if i get too many and my population gets too large for what i need

I do have gloves that I am supposed to use when I work with the rats, however you can tell alot more about the rats by feeling them with your hand (deformities, pregnancies, heartbeat, breathing, etc.) so I normally go without gloves. Most of my females have no problem with me reaching in to check out their litters. Of 25+ females Ive only had a problem with 2 of them. They were euthanized, and their litters split up between other litters.

My personal feeling is that you lose alot of size trying to wean them at 3-4 weeks. At 4 weeks the mothers and pups are moved to the first grow out enclosure. They are then weaned throughout the 5th week. Some females are really good about kicking them off the milk at 4-5 weeks other ones Ill manually remove for increasing amounts of time. Immediately weaning pups is pretty hard on the females ... they are still producing the milk and nothing there to take it. This is why I usually wean over a week.

Bryan

I did a few searches and couldnt find the rat pro rack you are talking about, do you have a link or site for it?


with 3 1.5 setups, perfectly spaced out, that would mean that each female's pregnancy/birth/weaning cycle takes up 3 weeks (gestation) + 5 weeks (nursing), so each female has a litter every 8 weeks, which means out of 15 females, thats about 2 litters per week on average?

I forgot that with the nursing each female is out of it for a while, i may need to
ramp up my plans a little to get enough throughput.

May I say how impressed I am Bryan with your tubs and setup. You'd be the one to do any write-up on rat breeding and setups...wow! Very nice and appropriate for rats. I bet you're getting some great results with little loss.



~~Jo~~

Heres the link to the racks I wish I had http://www.freedombreeder.com/cage.php?catID=2.

Extras can be fun to try and sell. I have worked out with a few pet shops to supply their frozen rodents (usually for store credit). When I have more than they need I put out a couple ads locally and on the internet. And If they are nearing the 2.5 month mark then Ill donate the frozen ones to a bird of prey rescue, zoo, animal shelter, or reptile rescue (makes a nice little tax write off).

My litters average 12 pups. At 2 litters per week im easily able to produce 20 a week. 3, 1:5 colonies would probably be just about right for needing to feed off 20 a week. Hard part is ramping up ... you are having to buy the rats to feed your snakes knowing the whole time that in 2 weeks youll have all they need. The other hard part of ramping up is working with first time rat mothers. While alot of them are good mothers from the get go you get some that dont want anything to do with them. Most of the problem ones are better on their second litter ... some just dont ever become a good mother. These ones you can take the babies about after birth and give off to other mothers, or if there is a need for pinkies use them for that. I usually give the mothers 4 hrs after birth to get settled in ... If they havent fed in that time they probably wont, much longer and you may lose the entire litter. Try to give to a female that his given birth within the last 2 days so there isnt a large size difference in the babies. I also try not to ever give any mother rat more than 18 pups total. Ive found that more than 18 really wears the female out. You can visibly see them lose weight daily regardless of feed.

I lose very few rats ... the ones I do are usually stillborn or squashed by the mother, If i find stillborns and squashed I throw them away. Having no idea why they died, its not a good practice to offer them as feeders (there may be something that could affect the animal eating them).

Thanks for the compliment Jo.

Bryan

Again, great info! thanks bryan

Heck I'm taking notes Bryan LOL. I like your idea of staged weaning and will definitely incorporate that into my routine with the colony.....makes so much sense I could kick myself for not realizing it (after all I nursed my own kids and know that abruptly ending nursing is not always a good idea for mammals LOL).

The Freedom Breeder rat racks are nice but at that price I'd be breeding a lot of rats to even get to the break even point LOL. Nice if you have the spare cash or are doing it on a large scale. For my little home breeder/feeder project...no where near feasible.

I always pair of my females so they go in with the breeder male together and generally birth their litters within a day of each other. I've only had to foster once for poor mothering (she refused outright to have a thing to do with her pinks) and once recently when I took in a preggie pet store rat and she nearly bled out delivering. Her pinks are with my albino female and the pet store female is doing very well without the strain of raising them.

Quick question here....do you think female rats exposed to multiple males (as this pet store rat was) can conceive from different breedings? Just odd that her litter (what survived of it) seems to be made up of rat pinks that are radically different....color wise and a HUGE size difference. Of the 6 surviving pinks I have 2 that are identical and big, 4 that are husky markings like the female and are the same size but probably 30%+ smaller than the other 2. I've never seen this size difference in any of my litters. The 3 pinks that did not survive birth and were born first....were all huge like these 2 monster pinks. Could there be two males involved here or something?

I don't use any pinks that don't survive birth, though out of 78 born since early December we've lost only 1 at birth (not counting the mess of the pet store female's birthing). I've had only one female refuse her litter and she did get fed off after I caught her. She jumped out of the tub when I was feeding her, to avoid the pinks I assume, and it took me three days to track her down!

It did take me 3 males to find a good breeder...the first was too old or infertile not sure, the next was okay but vicious with the females, I had females slashed by him....he met Rauri the BCI real fast....the big black hooded we have now (Casanova) is great....produces good offspring....breeds the females but is not aggressive to them or to me. He's currently hanging out with some of his male offspring for company as we are between available females. He's very good with the young males and lets them bounce all over him like a furry trampoline. It is quite funny that he's so big and they immitate him....he'll start to groom and a few of the boys (who look so like him) will line up and groom madly right beside him LOL


~~Jo~~

I agree on the freedom racks ... they are expensive ... but I can still wish I had them ::grins::. Basically I was in the same situation, for the number of rats I work with it wasnt cost effective.

I have seen what you mention in the rat litters. Quite a few animals are able to reject, accept, or hold onto sperm for a time. I would think that there is a good possibility they can have multiple fathers in one litter, but I have seen genetic holdbacks in dogs and cats, and would assume this is probably where the difference in the litter lies (generation skipping or recessive genes).

Bleed outs on females tend to be if they havent had a litter before 9 months old. At 9 months their pelvis fuses, if they havent had a litter before that time, it will fuse constricting the birth canal. Males not bred before 9 months tend to "forget how", not care, or go infertile.

Most females are bred for 9-12 months. Once litter size drops below 8 for 2 straight litters they are euthanized. As I dont have any snakes that eat this size these are the ones that are usually given away for tax purposes (My largest is eating 2-2.5 lb rabbits, the next largest is on 2 week old rats). Males kind of come and go.

My best and 2nd best males are actually on "stud loan" right now, this is done more to promote "good feelings" than anything else. The best is being bred to some blue agoutis (pets) about an hour drive south of me. The second best (and best female) are being loaned out to a school (along with a cage) for educational purposes. These particular rats are good mannered, dont bite, and dont mind being handled. I probably wont get these back but it does get word of mouth out in my community, and have consequently been able to sell some of my "pet colony" and a few cages.

Bryan

Hey Bryan, Im having trouble finding strips of aluminum anywhere. May I ask where you found those? Home Depot and Menards claimed they didnt have them. I also havnt found the mesh yet (but I didnt ask anyone in HD yet).

Thanks!

Home depot always claims not to have hardware cloth ... go back to the chain fence section ... youll find it there. The flat aluminum I have found at both a local hardware store (more of a farm hardware store) and home depot. I think you have to ask for flat aluminum. It is normally located near the channel iron and rebar.

Bryan