Breeder female Dies whils pregnant

I have 1.3 colony which have been together for around a month an half. All are 6 months old excpet the male whos a bit older.
I have had two litters of 8 of 2 females so far and my other female was due (in my opinion) to give birth this week. She has seemed totally fine and i even checked her this morning and she was live and well.

However i have come home from work to find her dead in a corner. No fight marks and no signs of labour.

Of all my feeders and breeders this is the first death i have had so im keen to work out why she died. so any suggestion would be helpful. Has anyone else had this happen?

I opened her up and found 15 babies inside her, All dead! I have put it down to too large a litter for such a young female but welcome anyone elses views.

All my rats are fed on a rat/ birdseed mix with fresh veg and mealworms given adhoc.

Now i have two litters weening and was ondering if i could just add another female to my colony or wether either she would kill the babies of the colony would kill her.

Obviously i want any opinions and thoughts on this as i dont want to lose anymore.

Regards Andy

I don't have a guess as to why your female died, but I am confident you can add another female without any problems. They might scrap a little bit at first but once the new wears off they'll settle down. The only thing you don't wanna do is add a male into an enclosure with babies from another male cause he probably will kill the babies.

If I were you, I would just let the other female have her pups and leave one of the female ones in there with her to grow up and breed, instead of tossing in one of your already weaned ones. I've attempted similar things before and the end result was bloody. :(

Think ill probably leave the colony as a 1.2 now as i have checked and the first female is showing signs of pregnancy again now so thats one puzzle solved.

Thanks for your input guys.... Just curious as to why she died after seeming so fine this morning.

Or you could pull your entire mini colony out, put a new female in there, then move them back in after a couple of days, when she smells like them.

Well... I've heard this works with adding males, but who knows.

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Originally Posted by docturgonzo

Thanks for your input guys.... Just curious as to why she died after seeming so fine this morning.

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There are any number of reasons for this... RI, cancer, baby bound, etc. I've lost some of my best breeders to labor and being baby bound. Sometimes it just happens.

If you want to add a new female get one that was just weaned from another group and just drop it in. The order of the adults is already established and the new one will grow into the botom slot.
:cool:

Usually this happens when the female is malnurished and becomes bound with the babies without the strength to push them out. I have had 3 female mice become bound with babies. I ended up putting them in the CO2 chamber to stop thier suffering.

Anytime a breeder unexpectedly dies, I simply feed off the rest of that breeding group and set up a new one as soon as possible. I produce enough that a replacement breeding group is ALWAYS available from the grow out tubs.

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Originally Posted by Mike Cavanaugh

Anytime a breeder unexpectedly dies, I simply feed off the rest of that breeding group and set up a new one as soon as possible. I produce enough that a replacement breeding group is ALWAYS available from the grow out tubs.

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I dont see a point in killing good breeders just because one dies. Now...if they all have had troubles then I could see me doing that. Also, Not always do you have extra breeders.