Largest litter?!?

Rats are pretty good about taking care of each others litters. 3 nursing females can take care of more than 30 pups so just leave them together. I'm in my litters almost every day ... Most rats are really tolerant of being disturbed.


6000 lbs of food is 120 bags ... 40 bags per pallet ... Pretty easy to store 3 pallets. Its brought up on a semi ... off loaded with a forklift.

Bryan

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Originally Posted by Sapphire7

When we bred rats we noticed you should NEVER bother or seperate them untill the rats are about 3-4wks of age at the very least or mom will get stressed or any other emotion and will kill/eat/dispose of her babies. I always kept all my rats in seperate enclosures unless breeding 1 wk after breeding I seperate them into their own homes and all is well :) And so daddy wont try to mate with mom because when rodents have babies they go back into heat right afterwards!:eek:

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The problem with moving them by themselves 1week after breeding is they get lonely :(

I pull all my super fat/freshly birthing moms and babies out and put them in seperate tubs... If we dont, we lose an average of 2-4 per litter... just from trampling and etc....

It is amazing how often the moms get knocked up after they give birth... I would say only about 1/10 of ours are double poppers, but we try to move most asap.

I've left my group together throughout all the litters and have only lost one baby, that I've seen. I use to freak out when I would see a baby separated from the litter, but quickly realized that one of the females always picks them up and groups them together.

We really don't disturb them at all except when cleaning and basically we have a back up tub prepped with clean Aspen, hide Box, and fresh water and all we do is pick up the group and move them over.