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.

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Originally Posted by Beardedragon

I dont see a point in killing good breeders just because one dies.

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Natural selection is powerful when dealing with large numbers, and Mike C. certainly deals with a pretty large number if ASFs.

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Originally Posted by Beardedragon

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.

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If the only reason you have them is to provide feeders then it never makes economical sense to try to fix a broken breeding group. Much easier to replace and be done with it.

In the OP case sure you could keep a female baby in the group and let it grow up to breeding size, but if you did:

1.) it would take FOREVER for the baby to get up to breeding size. don't know why but I have documented that in this exact scenario, the baby takes way longer then usual to get to size.

2.) I have also documented in this scenario that for whatever reasons, often times that baby never will produce babies, and if it does it is likely to be smaller then usual litters at first.

3.) Once the baby finally grows enough, and has a few small litters and starts to have normal sized litters, it is time to retire the rest of the group. So you have effectively wasted a huge amount of time, and the living space that has not produced the number of babies each space is supposed to produce.

Thanks for your opinions guys,

I think ill just leave these as a small colony of 1.2 and if the litter sizes drop ill feed them off. I did have another group of 1.3 to fall back but they all got out , never to be seen again.

I will set up another back up group which can be getting established whilst i feed off this first group.

Just got to look again at the diet i offer and make sure its correct and should be good to go.

Its all about learning i guess and i appreciate all your input guys.

Your english brother Andy

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Originally Posted by mainbutter

Natural selection is powerful when dealing with large numbers, and Mike C. certainly deals with a pretty large number if ASFs.

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Natural selection is when the animal dies from reasons out of our hands, not if we just kill breeders because one died. Asfs are also a totally different thing than normal rats. Id trust mike with anything to do with ASFS, but I have delt with hundreds of litters with normal rats so I know a fair bit about what should be done and what not.

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Originally Posted by Mike Cavanaugh

If the only reason you have them is to provide feeders then it never makes economical sense to try to fix a broken breeding group. Much easier to replace and be done with it.

In the OP case sure you could keep a female baby in the group and let it grow up to breeding size, but if you did:

1.) it would take FOREVER for the baby to get up to breeding size. don't know why but I have documented that in this exact scenario, the baby takes way longer then usual to get to size.

2.) I have also documented in this scenario that for whatever reasons, often times that baby never will produce babies, and if it does it is likely to be smaller then usual litters at first.

3.) Once the baby finally grows enough, and has a few small litters and starts to have normal sized litters, it is time to retire the rest of the group. So you have effectively wasted a huge amount of time, and the living space that has not produced the number of babies each space is supposed to produce.

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Mike, are we talking about the same thing here? Im saying if in a breeding group, an established one, if one of the breeders dies...you'd kill all of them? I never keep bad breeders, and normally my breeding groups are unrealted to the other rats in the tub so they are never from the same litter, so any bad genetics would not be a problem with the others if it is with one.

I think your saying that if you lets say have a group of 1.2 and a female dies...youd just get rid of the whole group because 1.1 really is a waist of space.

I normally keep 1.4... so if one gos I either replace it or just keep 1.3 going because that will produce plenty enough pinkys. Maybe thats where we are confused, because if something happens to one of mine I still have a good group going, but if something happens to his he only has one female.

Wow...You know what...Totally ignore my posts... I thought this was in the Normal rat section:oops:

LOL, I totally get what you were saying now mike. Bleh im loosing it.