Rat litter question

The other babies will probably be about the same color as the mother or a lot of white with some tan.

Just came back from a week trip and it looks like they've upgraded from pinks to pups. Got 5 of these and 2 black hooded. On the downside in my other cage where I had 1 male and 1 female they were both dead, no idea why yet

http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o...8/PIC-0033.jpg

Those are fuzzies not pups. They'll be pups once their eyes open at about 15 days of age. Was someone caring for your rats during your time away? Were the enclosure in direct sunlight?

I figure out what happened. Nobody was caring for them but I know how much food/water they use per day and i've never had any problems going away for 3-4 days. They are in my dark closet, no direct light.

I didn't see at first but it looks like the water bottle is totally destroyed, i've never seen any of my rats even nibble on the bottle but this one had huge pieces missing, so I guess the water probably rushed out and this type doesn't work without a vaccum seal, so even the pieces at the top missing would have ruined it.

I'm going to have to think of a different strategy with the water bottle

You can either go with glass rodent water bottles (a bit pricey) or simply buy some hardware cloth and create a bottle cover for it. If your rats are in tubs you can also simply keep the bottle wired on the outside and just melt a big enough hole for the spigot to feed through. I know one of our members even creates water bottle covers out of soda cans.