FRUSTRATED...What to try next

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Originally Posted by Deborah

Glad to hear things are looking up

Next time when you have a new female I would suggest you to set her up on her own when giving birth to her first litter to identify any possible problem (whether it is possible aggression or healthy issue with the babies).

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Good idea, I will be getting a few more females this week so I will keep them all seperate till I get a good litter out of them.

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Originally Posted by Monty

i would remove the males aftre the females become pregnant i know in mice if a male is in with a pregnant female and that female has babies the male will cull off the babies to keep on going at the female i dont know if thats true with rats but give it a try

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i know a few ppl that breed as well as i am and i dont have a problem with mice or rats eating the babies. i dont separate the males rats will eat the babies that they cant take care of or there is something wrong with them(some wont eat them period). mice on the other hand will eat them to control the population somewhat, but not as bad as my asfs do. ive noticed that sometimes if you have rats weening and pinks in the same tub sometimes the weenlings will eat the pinks.

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Originally Posted by nixer

ive noticed that sometimes if you have rats weening and pinks in the same tub sometimes the weenlings will eat the pinks.

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Why would you have weaners and pinks in the same tub?

Little update....I still have 15 babies :banana: :banana: :banana: starting to get a little fuzz and they all look great! Thanks again for the helpful replies! I'll get some pics up when I get a chance.

good job glad things are going good for you

Thanks Monty! So I got open eyes on some and my other female dropped a litter the other day and they are still alive and kicking as well. Finally! Thanks again all :gj:

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Originally Posted by Enve

Well i peeked on them again before I go to bed, they are still alive but they are now in 2 separate piles :confused: There are about 13 in one pile and 5 in another on the other end of the tank. They look fine but will the other female nurse them or will they die?

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Perfectly normal behaviour with a bigger litter. When I first started breeding rats and a female split her litter, I "helped" her by putting them all back together. I'll tell you I got some looks from those poor female rats who I'm sure didn't appreciate the idiot human "helping" them. LOL

They'll split the litter to allow every baby to get to a teat easily and also in case a predator showed up they can't eat the whole group that way. They'll pile them back together for nightly butt washing time and so forth.

I like my females seperated to give birth, especially the new mothers, so I can see whose got good mothering skills or who might be birthing defective babies, etc. Once the litters have their eyes open at around 15 days I generally put two moms and all their babies into a big tub so the females can finish raising their young communally and get some socializing with another adult female rat (also frees up my limited single maternity tanks).