size for male breeder rat

We now have 4 females rotating in with Casanova the male. Somebody BETTER get pregnant! Mike has taken to calling all 5 rats "the freeloaders" and I think I heard him mutter something about "if they ain't breedin, they're feedin"...accck!


~~Jo~~

aw, still no babies?! maybe casanova isn't so much the casanova after all.....

Good lord no! I swear sometimes I think I'm spoiling these rats so much they can't be bothered to do anything more than lay around cuddling each other and waiting for the sap to provide yet another scrumptious rat meal!

It's not like they aren't the right age, the right sex, obese or anything I can see wrong. Perhaps I'm just not being patient enough but lordy it seems everyone else just puts a boy with a girl and bingo! rat babies arrive.

I'm going to have a serious talk with Casanova about what can happen to a boy rat that doesn't apply his lil rat mind to his "work" LOL.

I sure hope when it comes time to breed snakes that I do a lot better than my current track record with rodents!


~~Jo~~

lol.. poor Jo. I have had some rats that are just slower.. one female only gave a litter every other month or so.. not every month like most do.

Do you leave the females with the male all the time? That is the best way to get babies.. if you 'rotate' the females, you aren't going to have as much luck.

actually about heat cycles: Females of breeding age come into heat all year round, every 4 to 5 days, unless they are pregnant or nursing. As a rule of thumb with rodents I personaly would not...and do not put more than one male in with female(s). Many people will keep pairs together while I have the best success by providing the most space possible to individual females who are preparing for birth. By keeping them seperate you can insure they are going to get all the food/water they need and can be monitored much more efficiently. With multiple females birthing at the same time you can also run into a dominant female "taking over" ALL babies trying to care for one huge litter. This can result in some malnurished pups and even death. For the most part this shouldn't be a problem...but I've seen it happen and have better luck giving females their own individual spaces. I get healthier litters, and much calmer breeder females.

What I have is one big cage and then two 10 gallon maternity glass tanks. I had the two bigger females in with the male for 2 to 3 weeks with the two smaller females seperate so they could have a bit more time to grow up. I figured after that time period the two big females would have gotten pregnant so rotated them out to seperate maternity tanks and popped in the 2 younger girls who now look old enough to make me some rat babies.

Well the two big girls spent the last three weeks lazing about their maternity tanks with no babies produced so they are now back in with the male to try again. I did pull the smaller younger females out as I'm concerned about overcrowding or the bigger females picking on the smaller females. The big girls have been together for quite a few months now as cage buddies (they started out as pets) and I didn't know if they would accept the two new females which are a fair bit smaller than they are.

If I were to put all 4 females in with the male at the same time, what is an appropriate size enclosure for them. I want rat babies but I don't want to put too many rats into a space too small for them all.

Shoot Em, my apologies for hijacking your thread!


~~Jo~~

nah you aren't hijacking jo, we're still talking about breeding rats. :) i have had 2 males and 2 females together for about 3-4 weeks in one big cage. i took the males out last night as it should be getting close to time for the females to deliver if they became pregnant soon after the males were introduced. once each female delivers i will move her into her own enclosure. i have 2 more females as well, but they aren't quite old enough to put into the rotation yet, so i'm thinking next time the original females deliver i'll put the younger girls in with the males. that's the plan right now anyhoo. :)

unless your needing ALOT of smaller sized rats/pups you should lay out a schedule at least in your mind and try and stick to it. Having several rats give birth to litters all in the same week can be overwhelming if your not ready for it and the space they will require as they grow...or maybe you have alot of smaller hungry snakes :) I try and cycle mine so that the litters are of varying stages of maturity. If you need adult sized rats and are breeding all of them at once it could be a bit expensive to raise 40ish rats all at once to adult size. I find it more cost effective to breed around my reptiles eating habbits and the current stock of rats I have. You may consider breeding just one or two of your girls now and letting the younger once mature more and breeding them later, this way if you feed off the litters of the first females you will have more feeders right behind, and by then the first females will be ready to enter the cycle again...but its really up to you and how your demand is for volume and sizes that you require for your reptiles.

As for males if you have one that is mature, healthy, and never misses ;) there really isn't a need for more than one unless your breeding MANY females. You can have one good stud that will carry you through a few years, to me having more than one male is just throwing food/money away they are almost always the first to be fed/sold out of my stock.

as for the males--i admit i'm being emotional about it. :P i want my male to have a friend when he's not with the ladies, so i have 2 males. and besides, they are cute. :)

right now i mostly need rats that are around weaned rat size. i have one adult female that wants live weaners and nothing else, but she will eat 3-4 per week. several of my other snakes are eating live weaned rats as well, 1-2 per week each. i still have some frozen rats (mostly smalls) for those that take f/t but i'd like to use those up and have my rat breeders provide enough to feed all the snakes. (which right now the count stands at 15 so there is a decent number of mouths to feed.) i do need to work out some kind of schedule that i can stick to and know that i will have the right numbers of food items when i need them.

That's sort of why I was thinking of rotating my females in pairs. While one pair is in with the studly wonder the other pair is out either delivering, nursing, whatever. Now if only somebody would get to it!

(Maybe some soft music, a lil white wine........)


~~Jo~~