OMG!! No one told me about De-Gloving!!!

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Originally Posted by littleindiangirl

Yes, most of my females would take a swing at me when handling the babies while she is in the tub.

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None of my females try to bite when I play with the babies. Most of them are not even socialized in any way beyond being picked up at cleaning time. They all make a mad dash dragging babies everywhere when I open the tubs.

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Originally Posted by Somed00d

None of my females try to bite when I play with the babies. Most of them are not even socialized in any way beyond being picked up at cleaning time. They all make a mad dash dragging babies everywhere when I open the tubs.

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Mine also do the mad dash and try to move babies away, but they are by far more interested in my hand and most likely wanting to tag me. I never hold still to see what they really want to do. I've been bitten by an adult rat before, and I never want to experience that ever again. lol;)

I've been bitten several times and always by a mama with a litter. They jump on the back of my hand and don't just take one bite and it seems to be right at the knuckles! :( and I cry like a girl . . . wait I am a girl! :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Pwilliams58

I've picked up thousands of rats by the tail with no problems ever. However, I do grab them as close as possible to the base of the tail.

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Same here. When I was breeding rats, some of the mama rats were okay with me just picking them up under their belly but for the most part my rats were not socialized to be able to do that. I aways just picked them up by the base of their tail.

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Originally Posted by lillyorchid

Same here. When I was breeding rats, some of the mama rats were okay with me just picking them up under their belly but for the most part my rats were not socialized to be able to do that. I aways just picked them up by the base of their tail.

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See and if I pick her up by the base of the tail she still gets a hold of me and tries to bite me through the gloves! :O There's no way to win with this one... Other than to get rid of her.... I still haven't decided how I'm doing that. Plus I need her for another two weeks or so till I feed off her babies.

I had one psycho girl that did a spin as you described and off came the first inch of tail flesh. I put her in a clean cage with a young female for company. After a week the tip of the tail fell off. A few weeks later it was healed. No infections, no issues. She was a good mother even being evil.

Definitely an "eeewww" moment. I pick up my rats about 50/50 between by tail at base and just grabbing their sweet squishy bodies...but I haven't de-gloved since manually euthanizing for the first time.

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Originally Posted by littleindiangirl

http://sterilite.com/Products/Catalog/1892_LG.jpg

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This cracks me up - this is exactly the tub I used to create my old euthanasia chamber!

And on mean rats...life's short for mean rats. For every mean rat, there is a hungry snake. I just killed off a mean momma girl who was also a chewer. Carmen thought she was tasty. :snake:

I actually de-gloved a f/t mouse once. It ended up on the floor. Splat. I was confused at first because I still had the trail skin in my fingers. ha ha. :P

Even that freaked me out. So I can imagine it was not a good experience for you or your rat.