What's the wait?

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Originally Posted by wolfy-hound

piles ALL her aspen into one huge pile, and even gets it pushed out the top of the rack. A little frustraing, and you might want to be sure that the water bottle is not touching whereever they have decided to pile, as it can siphon the water out, and then you have icky wet bedding.

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Ugh I hate that - I have a few that will do that constantly - to the poin almost all the bedding is heaped up on one end of the cage and half the floor exposed.

Yeah not much worry on the biting - though you don't get any telegraphed strikeing postures to clue you in lol. Hey at least you dont have to worry about them dropping teeth when they bite you and maybe getting the socket infected lol.

I felt like my girls were prego for a few days now! I cleaned my tubs yesterday like I do every Sunday and nothing, today I went to check on their water and food and hear little squeals!


One of the females dropped 6-8 babies as far as I can tell, there may be more in there. As soon as they felt the cage moved they dragged the babies out of the hide and then just sat on them while they sucked.

I left them alone after making sure they had food & water!!

Congrats! I usually take nest building as a sign of 2 weeks pregnant +

If you pick them up you can usually feel the difference, and see that they are a bit more rotund. First litter moms might not show much at all and only have a small litter. Some mothers may swell up like a softball until you think they are going to explode (I got about 20 out of that one :) and she looked pregnant for 2 weeks.

Should I leave the other female and male with the mom and babies?
Should I clean the cage this weekend as usual?

How do I remove the mom and babies?

I would leave them all together, and change the cage as normal too.

Remove the female and other adults first, and then take the babes out. Clean cage, put babes back, than adults. just no dilly dallying! :) Grats on the litter!

Congrats on your first rat litter Gerry! I usually breed my females in pairs to the male and remove them when they start to get that chunky, pear shape (easier seen if you grasp them under their front legs and let them stand upright on your other palm). Some will get so huge they flop over on their back near the end and do the "dead rat" posture (scared the heck out of me the first time LOL).

When I take them away from the male they go one female per smaller maternity tub/tank until they've weaned their litter. I just find it easier to have each mother and her litter on their own so I can track who is raising litters well and who isn't. As well females can steal babies back and forth and occasionally injure the delicate pinkie rats. Also if you leave the male in there, he'll almost immediately rebreed your nursing female so she'll be in effect nursing one litter while another is growing inside her. For me anyways (since I'm not breeding 100's of rats) this is too much strain on my breeding females condition.

To remove her just do it quickly and with little muss or fuss, then leave her be with her babies in the new tub. She'll soon settle in with them. All rats nurse from above or the side so if you do provide a hide (which you don't have to) make sure it has lots of head space so the female can lay on top of the babies to nurse them as they tend to do that more until the rat young are quite a bit bigger.

Thanks, I think I'll let them be until this weekend when cleaning day comes around. I'll just check in once a day to make sure they have food and water.

I was just about to give up hope when I heard the little squeals!
Very cool!

Now, when should I remove them from mom?

The babies wean at three to four weeks, then mine get set up in the grow out racks separated by sex. You could keep them in longer if you need to, but you'll need to clean the bins more often. Expect more babies soon, most females in new colonies will drop litters within a week of each other. Congrats on the litter!

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Originally Posted by ssscales

Now, when should I remove them from mom?

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Between 3- 4 weeks you will see them snacking on food, but when I see them drink out of the water bottle is usually when I wean the babies. Most of my weanlings are in the 30-35 gram range, occasionally 40 grams.

Make sure you are putting in lots of extra food and water around that 2.5-3.5 week mark as the little bugger's will not only start eating and drinking mom's supplies but nurse on her as well (little rat's are such leeches LOL!).

I usually wean mine around 4 weeks or thereabouts but I'm going to start with my next litter with staged weaning so that week 5 the weanlings will be with their mother part of the day and part of the day without her. One of our other members (I think it was Bdadawg) mentioned he does staged weaning and feels it benefits the litter and their dam rather than an abrupt weaning. I'll have to see if this produces any noticeable benefits for my colony.